PAPER, sheets of a thin matter, made of some vegetable substance. The ma terials on which mankind have, in different ages, contrived to write their sentiments, have been extremely various ; in the ear ly ages they made use of stones, and ta bles of wood, wax, ivory, &c. Paper, with regard to the manner of making it, and the materials employed therein, is re ducible to several kinds ; as Egyptian pa per, made of the rush papyrus ; bark pa per, made of the inner rind of several trees ; cotton paper ; incombustible pa per; and European paper, made of linen rags.
Egyptain paper was principally used among the ancients ; being made of the papyrus, or biblus, a species of rush, which grew on the banks of the Nile : in making it into paper, they began with lopping off the two extremes of the plant, the head and the root: the re maining part, which was the stem, they cut lengthwise into two nearly equal parts, and from each of these they strip ped the scaly pellicles of which it con sisted. The innermost of these pellicles were looked on as the best, and that nearest the rind as the worst : they were therefore kept apart, and made to con stitute two different sorts of paper. As the pellicles were taken off; they extend ed them on a table, laying them over each other transversely, so as that the fibres made right angles ; in this state they were glued together by the muddy wa ters of the Nile ; or, when those were not to be had, with paste made of the finest wheat flour, mixed with hot water and a sprinkling of vinegar. The pelli cies were next pressed, to get out the water, then dried, and lastly flatted and smoothed by beating them with a mallet this was the Egyptian paper, which was sometimes further polished by rubbing it with a glass ball, or the like.
Bark paper was only the inner whitish rind, inclosed between the bark and the wood of several trees, as the maple, plane, beech, and elm, but especially the Cilia, or linden tree, which was that most ly used for this purpose. On this, strip ped ofl; flatted, and dried, the ancients wrote books, several of which are said to be still extant.
Chinese paper is of various kinds ; some is made of the rinds or barks of trees, especially the mulberry tree and elm, but chiefly of the bamboo and cot ton tree. In fact, almost each province has its several paper. The preparations of paper made of the barks of trees may be instanced in that of the bamboo, which is a tree of the cane or reed kind. The second skin of the bark, which is soft and white, is ordinarily made use of for pa per : this is beat in fair water to a pulp, which they take up in large moulds, so that some sheets are above twelve feet in length : they are completed by dipping them, sheet by sheet, in alum water, which serves instead of the size among us, and not only hinders the paper from imbibing the ink, but makes it look as if varnished over. This paper is white, soft, and close, without the least rough ness, though it cracks more easily than European paper; is very subject to be eaten by the worms, and its thinness makes it liable to be soon worn out.
Cotton paper is a sort of paper which has been in use upwards of six hundred years. In the grand library at Paris are manuscripts on this paper, which appear to be of the tenth century ; and from the twelfth century, cotton manuscripts are more frequent than parchment ones.
Cotton paper is still made in the East Indies, by beating cotton rags to a pulp.
Linen or European paper appears to have been first introduced in England to wards the beginning of the fourteenth century, but by whom this valuable com modity was invented is not known. The method of making paper of linen or hempen rags is as follows : the linen rags being carried to the mill, are first sorted ; then washed very clean in puncheons, whose sides are grated with strong wires, and the bottoms bored full of holes. Af ter this they are fermented, by laying them in heaps close covered with sack ;lig, till they sweat and rot ; which is commonly done in four or five days. 'When duly fermented, they are twisted into handfuls, cut small, and thrown into oval mortars, made of well-seasoned oak, about half a yard deep, with an iron plate at bottom, an inch thick, eight in ches broad, and thirty long ; in the mid dle is a washing block, grooved, with five holes in it, and a piece of hair sieve fas tened on the inside : this keeps the ham mers from touching it, and prevents any thing from going out, except the foul wa ter. These mortars are continually sup plied with water, by little troughs, from a cistern, fed by buckets fixed to the se veral floats of a great wheel, which raises the wooden hammers for pounding the rags in the mortars. When the rags are beaten to a certain degree, called the first stuff, the pulp is removed into boxes, made like coruchandlers' bins, with the bottom board aslant, and a little separa tion on the front, for the water to drain away. The pulp of the rags being in, they take away as many of the front boards as are needful, and press the mass down hard with their hands : the next day they put on another board, and add more pulp, till the box is full, and here it remains mellowing a week, more or less, according to the weather. After this, the stuff is again put into clean mor tars, and is beaten afresh, and removed into boxes, as before ; in which state it is called the second stuff. The mass is beat a third time, till some of it being mixed with fair water, and strewed to and fro, appears like flour and water, without any lumps in it ; it is then fit for the pit mortar, where it is perfectly dis solved, and is then carried to the vat, to be formed into sheets of paper. But lately, instead of pounding the rags to a pulp with large hammers, as above, they make use of an engine, which performs the work in much less time. This en. gine consists of a round solid piece of wood, into which are fastened several long pieces of steel, ground very sharp. This is placed in a large trough with the rags, and a sufficient quantity of water. At the bottom of the trough is a plate with steel bars, ground sharp like the former ; and the engine being carried round with prodigious velocity, reduces the rags to a pulp in a very short time. It must be observed, that the motion of the engine causes the water in the trough to circulate, and by that means constant ly returns she stuff to the engine. The trough is constantly fed with clean water at one end, while the dirty water from the rags is carried off at the other, through a hole, defended with wire grat ings, in order to hinder the pulp from going off with the dirty water.