Découverte et création du papier

History

Paper is a thin material produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets.

The history of paper began during the antiquity: the first paper with a message was found in China and date to the eight year BC. The process of fabrication hasn’t really changed since. It consists in 2 stages:

Disintegration of the raw material in the water in order to have individual fibers in suspension.

Fabrication of sheets by putting fibers in suspension on a surface where the water can dry.

According to Chinese tradition, it would be T’sai Lun, minister of agriculture who, in the 105 year, improve the technic of creation and launched the mass fabrication of paper.

The art of papermaking began to creep out of China since the 3rd century, first to Vietnam then Tibet, Korea and Japan in the 6th century.

Papermaking spread slowly in Asia but it made its true push when the Tang Dynasty was at war with the Islamic world. During a battle Islamic warriors captured a Chinese caravan which happened to include several papermakers. Finally, when the Moors invaded Spain and Portugal, they brought the technology with them in the 12th century and papermaking replaced the use of parchments.

Finally, with the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution, the use of paper grew and technics of fabrication and impression were improved.

Format

We are now going to see the particularity of actual format of paper For example, the format A4 do 21cm of large and 29,7cm of height.

These dimensions do that when we bend the paper, we find the same link between the dimensions.

It’s a German scientist who found this particularity in 1786, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg but the format already existed at this moment because he wrote his report on a paper with this particularity but we didn’t know if the producer was aware about it.

It’s in France after the French Revolution, period where a lot of norms where created that they tried to legalize this format, but it was not really applied for a long period.

It’s in Germany that this norm reappeared during the twentieth century with and Engineer, and in 1922 the norm is created.

Since, this norm has been adopted all around the world.

Actually

Paper is inclined to disappear in favour of dematerialization, for environmental and some economics reasons but it’s not a certitude.

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