Two Related Industries; An Account of Paper-Making and of Paper-Makers' Felts as Manufactured at the Kenwood Mills, Rensselaer, New York, U. S. A., an

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920 edition. Excerpt: ... CHINESE PAPER-MAKING--FIRST PROCESS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF PAPER ENTURIES ago the Chinese with the subtle magic of the East produced a material suitable for writing purposes that they made from the bark of the mulberry-tree; shortly afterward they utilized rags for paper. And yet the world was old when this important discovery was made. For thousands of years man, born with a desire to express his thoughts, had endeavored to perpetuate great deeds and the lives of heroes. First with rough implements he carved his thoughts in rude characters on rock and stone; four thousand years before Christ he reared against the Egyptian sky tapering obelisks; he adorned the temples and sepulchres with hieroglyphics that told tales of those who had passed. In order to transcribe his thoughts he resorted to beeswaxed board, to the skins and entrails of animals, to the shoulder-bones of sheep, to the skins of serpents. He made parchment--a direct forerunner of paper--and thus bridged the centuries until he discovered the properties of the graceful reed that grew on the banks of the Nile. Thus papyrus marked the first real advance toward modern paper-making, and on it events were recorded until the Chinese marked a new era by the discovery of paper-making. INTRODUCTION OF THE ART OF PAPER-MAKING INTO EUROPE How the Arabs after their capture of Samarcand in A.d. 704 stole from the Chinese the secret of paper-making and carried it to their own towns and cities, and how the Crusaders in their turn when they visited Palestine and Syria learned the art which they brought back to Western Europe, has been often told. Europe, however, was slow in developing the industry. It was not until 1189 A.d. that France made paper from pulp. For some centuries the French...