PAPER. A thin and flexible sub stance of various colors, but most com monly white, used for writing and print ing on, and for various other purposes. It is manufactured of vegetable matter, reduced to a pulp by means of water and grinding ; and is made up into sheets, quires, and reams, each quire consisting of twenty-four sheets, and each ream oi twenty quires.
For the chief purposes to which paper is applied in modern times the ancients had recourse to a variety of materials : stone, tablets of wood, plates of lead, skins, parchment, linen, layers of wax, tablets of ivory, and, above all, the papy rus. The ability to write, created a ne cessity for some material on which to in cribe ; and all these various materials were resorted to in succession, as the in eligibility of each induced a fresh endea vor to discover some more desirable substitute.
The papyrus was the immediatepre cursor of paper, and the article from which it was first manufactured. Egypt has the honor of the invention ; and Isi dore even fixes the locality at Memphis ; the date remains in some obscurity, al though it has been warmly disputed. Varro the Roman, ascribes it to the time of Alexander the Great, after the found ing of Alexandria; but we find in Pliny the recital of a passage, extracted from the writings of Cassius Hemina, an an cient annalist, in which he speaks of some books, found in the tomb of Numa when it was opened, 636 years after his decease, and asserts that these books were of paper, and had been interred with him. As Numo preceded Alexan der 300 years, this circumstance, if ad mitted, would carry back the date of the invention anterior to that time. How ever, the antiquity of such a date is much doubted ; but as Pliny gives an account of the manner of making the papyrus paper, and it seems to have been in high reputation in the time of Alexander the Great, it is probable that such improve ments were made during his reign as to enhance the value and increase the man ufacture.
The great improvement in paper was its manufacture from cotton. It is sup posed that the Chinese and Persians were acquainted with this material for its production, and that the Arabians learned it from their conquest in Tartary, The ancient paper bears no marks of the wire through which the water is drained in modern • and it is therefore inferred that a different process was employed. Paper made from cotton was in use earlier with the Greeks than with the Romans. The manufacture of
paper from cotton cannot be traced farther back than to the tenth century ; and the oldest manuscript document written on this cotton paper is dated 1050.
When or by whom linen paper was in vented seems uncertain : the Chinese appear to have the best pretensions. Its introduction into England took place about the year 1342, in the reign of Ed ward III., although some have supposed it as early as 1320. France had it in 1314, and Italy in 1367. The Germans possess a specimen bearing the date of 1308, although it has been surmised that this single instance may have been a mixture of linen with cotton.
In the Tower, there are a few letters upon cotton paper, yet parchment or vellum was generally used ; and these are among the earliest examples of any continued correspondence upon the more commodious material, which in England was very rarely employed. It is highly probable that, in the south of France, the supply was received from the Moor ish merchants or manufacturers of Spain.
Perhaps no other manufacture ever re mained so long nearly stationary ; though within the last fifty years such great and rapid improvements have been made in it, as to equal, if not to surpass, any other branch of manufacturing industry.
The application of paper to the pur poses of writing and printing, and the fact of its being indispensable to the pro secution of the latter, render its manu facture of the highest utility and impor tance. But, even in a commercial point of view, its value is very considerable. France, Holland, and Genoa had, for a lengthened period, a decided superiority in this department. The finest and beat paper being made of linen rags, its qua lity may be supposed to in a considerable degree, on the sort of linen usually worn in the country where it is Manufactured ; and this circumstance is said to account for the greater whiteness of the Dutch and Belgian papers as com pared with those of the French and Ita lians, and, still more, of the Germans. The rags used in the manufacture of writing-paper in Great Britain, are col lected at home ; but those used in the manufacture of the best printing•paper are imported principally from Italy, Ham burgh, and the Austrian States, by way of Trieste. The value of the rags saved in the United States is nearly 24 million dollars yearly.