A Brief History

Whilst the first uses of paper has always been for communicating and writing. In the ancient civilizations we used to write on barks of wood, Clay blocks, textiles, calf skin, amongst other mediums to communicate and preserve their history.

However Paper bears no relation to the writing material that came before it. Some historians think that the idea of papermaking came from felting, a practice that pre‐dated weaving and entailed beating wool until it mashed into a thick fibrous mat. However whilst the answer to the same is a mystery, paper has had a long evolution!
Paper is accredited to be invented in China by Cai Lun, in AD 105, During the rule of the Han Dynasty. The original form of paper is said to have been manufactured using barks of trees, hemp, rags of cloth and fishing nets. The process launched paper into common use.

In the second century CE, paper began to change. It became stronger, thinner, and more commonly and cheaply produced. Most of the earliest kinds of paper, up to and including Cai Lun’s had been made by beating fabric scrap to pulp with a mortar. The pulp was then poured into molds, which sat above tubs until the sheet set. This technique was slow, but so was the demand.

It wasn’t until the 1100’s, that’s when paper arrived to the west and not until 1800’s when paper could be produced using a continuous process. One person responsible for the invention of the said mill is Louis – Nicolas Robert from France. Louis, was granted the patent for continuous paper making machine in 1799.

At the time, Robert was working for Saint‐Léger Didot, with whom he quarrelled over the ownership of the invention. Didot believed that England was a better place to develop the machine. But during the troubled times of the French Revolution, he could not go there himself, so he sent his brother‐in‐ law, John Gamble, an Englishman living in Paris. Through a chain of acquaintances, Gamble was introduced to the brothers Sealy and Henry Fourdrinier, stationers of London, who agreed to finance the project. Gamble was granted British patent 2487 on October 20, 1801. The Fourdrinier machine used a specially woven fabric mesh conveyor belt (known as a wire, as it was once woven from bronze) in the forming section, where a slurry of fibre (usually wood or other vegetable fibres) is drained to create a continuous paper web. The original Fourdrinier forming section used a horizontal drainage area, referred to as the drainage table.

With the help of Bryan Donkin, a skilled and ingenious mechanic, an improved version of the Robert original was installed at Frogmore Paper Mill, Apsley, Hertfordshire, in 1803, followed by another in 1804. A third machine was installed at the Fourdriniers’ own mill at Two Waters. The Fourdriniers also bought a mill at St Neots intending to install two machines there, and the process and machines continued to develop.

Thomas Gilpin is most often credited for creating the first U.S cylinder type papermaking machine at Brandywine Creek, Delaware in 1817. This machine was also developed in England, but it was a cylinder mould machine. The Fourdrinier machine wasn’t introduced into the USA until 1827.