papermaking
papermaking |
|
|
For people living in modern days, paper is an essential necessity in daily life: writing paper, packing paper, napkins, and even toilet paper. The demand for paper is everywhere. 5000 years ago in ancient Egypt, the first type of paper, papyrus (莎草紙) already existed. Chinese claim there are four great Chinese inventions, and one of these is paper (others include gunpowder, the compass, and printing). Papyrus is different from modern paper, which is made of bast fiber (pulp). The Chinese invention of modern paper was an important contribution to human society. In China, before the characters were created (before 1700 BC), Chinese people tied knots on a rope to trace records, very similar to how the Inca communicated with their quipu knot system. After the characters were created (Chinese characters first appear around 1600-1700 BC), the methods for writing characters changed, both the shapes of the characters and the methods for writing altered over the generations. One of the earliest forms of writing, the Oracle Script (Jia Gu Wen甲骨文) was used more than three thousand years ago in the Shang dynasty (approximately 1600 BC to 1046 BC). Oracle Script characters were carved on turtle shells and ox bones. Later , in the later Shang and through the Western Zhou dynasty (1046 BC to 771 BC), characters were inscribed on bronze vessels. This practice began in the late Shang, Dynasty, around 1300 BC. These bronze inscriptions (Zhong Ding Wen 鐘鼎文) appeared as bronze technology developed, and many inscriptions from 3,000 years ago on bells, tripods, and other vessels can still be read today. Bamboo Slip writing (Zhu Jian 竹簡) flourished in the end of Spring and Autumn period (771-475 BC), and Silk Cloth writing ( Jian Bo 縑帛) dates to the Warring States Period(475 BC to 249 BC). Early Chinese books were mostly written on bamboo slips, but bamboo took too much space and was not easy to carry around; silk cloth was a lighter but more expensive alternative to bamboo, but an average person could not afford it. In early Western Han dynasty in second century before the common era, the earliest Chinese plant fiber paper, (Baqiao paper灞橋紙) appeared. Its quality was quite rough, and it was not suitable for writing. During the Eastern Han dynasty, in the year 105 AD, an official in the imperial court of China named Cai Lun蔡倫 (Lun Cai in English format) improved the technique of papermaking. He used mulberry bark, hemp, rags, and worn-out fishing nets as raw materials. The process of papermaking had to begin with chopping these raw materials in pieces, soaking them in water and adding lime, cooking, mashing and beating the mixture, until it became a well-mixed pulp. In the next step, papermakers used a bamboo screener skillfully to screen an even layer of pulp, and dehydrated the pulp by pressing. After drying, a soft paper was created. The product was light and thin, which was good for writing, easy to carry around, and much less expensive than silk to produce. By 650 AD Chinese paper was being used in Central Asia, and Samarkand became a center of papermaking from the middle of the eighth century until, by the end of the 10th century, papermaking had become widespread through the Islamic world, replacing papyrus and vellum (made from animal hide) as a medium for writing. By the 12th century some Europeans in Spain and Italy had begun to make paper, although initially some Europeans disliked paper because of its association with Islamic civilization. However, papermaking impacted deeply not only China itself, but also other countries, especially enabling the invention of printing later on.
Back to the World History Timeline in English Back to the Historylines home page. Articles of French history:Eiffel tower, Louvre, Versailles, Notre-Dame de Paris, Paris Opera house. Articles of Chinese history: oil well, abacus, compass, gunpowder, first dictionary, paper money, wheelbarrow
|
|
