PAPER (OF., Fr. papier, from Lat. papyrus, from Gk. irdrupos, papyrus, papyrus). Although the word 'paper' is derived from 'papyrus' (q.v.), papyrus is not a paper at all. and the beginnings of the paper industry are not traced back to it. but to the genuine paper made by the Chi nese from very early times. From the Chinese it spread to other races, and was probably brought into Europe during the twelfth cen tury through the Moors into Spain, and at the time of the Second Crusade into Italy. About the year 1150 a paper mill was started at Fabriano, Italy, which became the principal centre for paper-making, and this region con tinues the manufacture to the present day. From the art spread to France and Germany, somewhat later to England, where it was not well established until the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1655 sent many French paper-ma kers into exile to England and America. In 1690 the first paper mill in America was built by William Rittenhouse at Roxborough. near Philadelphia. The first paper mill in New Eng land was built by a company to which was granted by the Governor and Legislature in 1728 the sole privilege of making paper in the Prov ince of Massachusetts for ten years. In 1730 the
manufacture of paper was begun by this com pany, and specimens of paper were shown to the Legislature.
L'p to the beginning of the nineteenth century, while machinery was used to reduce the rags to a pulp, the formation of the sheet of paper was done entirely by band, sheet by sheet, as described below. About 1798 Louis Robert, a workman in the mill of Didot at Essonne, France, patented an invention for making paper in an endless web, but it was not put to practical use till developed in England by Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier, who spent and lost a fortune perfecting the machine. They are properly con sidered the founders of modern paper-making, and their machine is universally known as the Fourdrinier machine. So well was their develop went work done that the early machines differ in minor details only from the most modern machine running to-day.