Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/61

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PAPEE 51 40; antiquarian, 31 by 53. USES. Besides the manufacture of ordinary paper, the pulp, pre- pared from whatever materials, may be devoted to an infinite variety of uses, such as paper hangings, pasteboard, boards of different kinds, boxes, papier mache, sheathing for vessels, boats, furniture, car wheels, tubs, water buck- ets, and other household utensils. Both the Chinese and Japanese make furniture, cloth- ing, hats, shoes, umbrellas, handkerchiefs, nap- kins, twine, and many other useful articles from this material. The Japanese make a paper cloth, known as shifu, which is said to bear washing. Boxes, trays,' and even saucepans are made of it, and it is also made into bags for holding wine. The oil paper for water-proof clothing is prepared from a kind called seulca. The pieces are joined together by a cement made of young fern shoots, ground and boiled into a paste and thinned with the juice of unripe persimmons. The paper is softened by rub- bing in the hands, and is coated with an oil from a seed called ye-no-dbura. In England paper used for water pipes and tanks has been found to preserve water from freezing longer than lead will do. In 1868 Col. Muratori of the French army began experiments with a paper cuirass, light to wear, but tough enough to resist bullets. In the London international exhibition of 1872 there was shown a model house made of paper, with water flowing over it. In the United States the consumption of paper for collars and cuffs is enormous. HIS- TORY. Papyrus, chiefly of Egyptian manufac- ture, continued in use in European countries for some centuries after the Christian era, and was finally displaced by the charta bonibycina, or paper made of cotton, the Greek word pfyfivg being in ancient times used either for silk or cotton. According to Gibbon, who cites the authority of the librarian Casiri, in the Biblio- theca Arabico-Hispana, the art of manufac- turing paper from vegetable fibre was derived from Samarcand, where it was introduced from China in the year 651, and thence spread over Europe, having been introduced at Mecca in 707. About the same time the Saracens are said to have learned to make paper from cot- ton, and they brought it to Spain in 711. The bulls of the popes in the 8th and 9th centuries were written upon cotton paper. The oldest manuscript written on it in England is in the Bodleian collection of the British museum, hav- ing the date 1049. The most ancient manu- script on cotton paper in the library of Paris is dated 1050. In 1085 the Christian successors of the Spanish Saracens made paper of rags in- stead of raw cotton. Linen rags appear to have been used at a somewhat later period, probably first in Spain. The oldest specimen of linen paper having a date is said to be a treaty of peace between the kings of Aragon and Castile of 1177. As stated in the " Chronology of Pa- per and Paper Making," by J. Munsell (Albany, L857), paper mills were in operation at Toledo in Spain in 1085, making paper from rags with the use of moulds for forming the sheets ; and in 1151 the best paper was made at Jativa from raw cotton and rags, which were reduced to pulp by stamping them in mills instead of grind- ing after the Moorish method. In France the manufacture dates as far back as 1314, and about the same time in Germany ; and in Italy it was conducted in 1367. Linen paper seems to have been common in Germany in 1324 and afterward. Though paper had long been known in England, parchment or vellum was in the time of Edward II. the writing material com- monly employed. In 1390 Ulmann Strother es- tablished a paper mill at Nuremberg, in which the fibre was reduced to pulp by the operation of 18 stampers. In 1498 this entry appears among the privy expenses of Henry VII. : "For a rewarde yeven at the paper mylne, 16s. 8<Z." This mill was probably that spoken of in Wynkin de Worde's De Proprietatilus Rerum as belonging to John Tate. Tate's mill was at Harford, and he used a water mark, which was an eight-pointed star within a double circle. John Tate died in 1514. The first mill of which there is any particular account is one built at Dartford in Kent, by a German named John Spilman or Spielman, jeweller to Queen Elizabeth. This is celebrated in a poem on paper of the date of 1588. The business made but slow progress, and during the 17th century the supplies were chiefly from France, which country, with Holland and Genoa, main- tained a decided superiority in this produc- tion. As late as 1663 England imported from Holland 100,000 worth of paper. In Eng- land great improvements were introduced by the French refugees of 1685; and from this time the business advanced in importance. In 1690 particular attention began to be directed to the production of white paper, almost all that was previously made being brown. The celebrated manufacturer James Whatman had his mill in operation at Maidstone in 1770 ; and from that time to the present its product has been famous for its superior quality. About the same period important improvements were made in the manufacture in Holland and Ger- many. Cylinders armed with steel blades for reducing the pulp were substituted by the Dutch, about the year 1750, for the stampers which were before in use. They were run with far greater ease by their windmills, and proved much more effectual. The Germans attempted the use of straw in 1756; and in France in 1776 a book was printed upon paper of good white appearance made from the bark of the linden (basswood). As early as 1719 Reaumur had printed an essay suggesting wood as a ma- terial, his hint being derived from observing that the fabric of wasps' nests was from that material. The greatest advances in the manu- facture were now made by the French. In 1799 Louis Robert, an employee of Francois Didot of Essonnes, France, introduced an in- vention, which was patented the same year, by which paper 12 ft, wide and of an indefinite