PAPER making! FROM THE PUBLISHERS OF PAPER TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL O U S SO Volume 6, Number 2, 2020
PITA CENTENARY PART 1: BIRTH OF THE TECHNICAL ASSOCIATION Daven Chamberlain, PITA Publications Editor Prehistory 1 The traditional date and place given for the development of paper is 105AD in China. In fact earlier samples of ‘proto - paper’ have been unearthed by archaeologists, and indeed dating the commencement of a craft like paper manufacture is not an exact science. Nevertheless, first century China will do. What is more certain is that for almost a thousand years it stayed in the Far and Middle East, only reaching the shores of Europe in the eleventh or twelfth centuries when it was brought to Spain by the Moors. It then limped across Christian Europe at a slow pace, crossing the English Chanel at the end of the fifteenth century. The process of inculcation commenced with introduction of the material by an outside agency, followed by assimilation through imports, before indigenous manufacture commenced. So for the UK, the earliest paper found in the Public Record Office dates from about 1220, yet the first mill commenced in the 1490s. In some ways the UK was a ‘special case’ because at this period it was a major producer and exporter of wool, and sheepskin parchment was therefore readily available and the medium of choice for written communication and record keeping. The first paper mill, in Sele, Hertfordshire, did not last long, and although a few examples did crop up at various sites in the sixteenth century, it was not until the 1600s that a native UK industry took hold properly. Throughout this time start-ups were based largely in England, and spread only slowly to Ireland and Scotland (both by 1590), and finally to Wales (possibly 1650s, certainly by 1706). Ironically, given that the first English mill made white printing paper, the vast majority of that produced by the burgeoning industry was the much simpler brown grades used for wrapping purposes; the country imported the majority of high quality white grades from France, Italy and the Netherlands until well into the eighteenth century. Notable Inventions and Achievements 2 Although it was rather ‘late to the table’, the inventiveness of th e UK populous did take hold of the craft eventually. Notable achievements were the development of a smooth (wove) surface by James Whatman in the 1750s, which gave much-improved print quality over the more textured laid sheet that had hitherto been made. Then, although the outline design for a mechanised method of paper manufacture had been produced in Revolutionary France, it was brought to fruition and commercialised (in Frogmore Mill, Hertfordshire, 1804) thanks to English engineering skill in the form of John Hall and Bryan Donkin, along with finance from the Fourdrinier family, who added their name to the first design. Just along the way from Frogmore lay Apsley Mill, owned by John Dickinson, and in 1809 he patented his rival design, the cylinder mould; together these two machines were to revolutionise the industry, although neither as yet offered the potential to form a dry web; in both designs the wet web, after pressing, was reeled on a drum, then slit with a sharp knife to yield sheets that could be hung in a loft, as per the standard hand- manufacturing process. This was changed with the development of steam-heated cylinders, patented by Thomas Bonsor Compton in 1821. Soon after, in 1825, the dandy roll was patented by John and Christopher Phipps (although a rival patent by John Marshall also dates from around this time). The necessary components for a machine to produce a continuous, dry web of paper which could, if necessary, be watermarked, were now in evidence, and the industry could therefore develop … except for the minor problem of raw materials. Although papermakers in the East used raw trees and plants as their raw fibrous material for paper manufacture, in the West textile rags had been the source of choice from the start. However, availability of rags (made originally from hemp or linen, with cotton being introduced much later) proved a brake on development of the industry. Even when papers were made solely by hand, the UK had to import much of the raw materials from mainland Europe. Now that a machine had been produced, which had the potential to ramp up production significantly, the lack of high volumes of a reliable fibre source became a major hurdle.
Article 16 – PITA History Parts 1-3
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