"Paper can convey a private warning, a public threat, secret temptation, open defiance..."
Eric Frank Russell, Wasp (1957)
In 105 when Ts'ai Lun (50-121), a courtier in the Chinese Imperial court, invented paper, little did he realize that he was opening one of the most epoch-making chapters in history. He refined and popularized the process of mixing tree fibers and wheat stalks with the bark of a mulberry tree, then pounding them together and pouring the mixture onto a woven cloth to create a lightweight writing surface. His blended, fibrous sheets were an improvement over bamboo and wood, which were awkward and heavy, and silk, which was expensive. Successive Chinese dynasties conspired to keep his invention secret, and it was not until the start of the seventh century that papermaking techniques began to appear in Japan and Korea.
With the capture of Chinese paper merchants by Arab soldiers during the Battle of Talas in 751, the, knowledge of papermaking soon spread across the Arab world, and first appeared in Europe in Moorish Spain early in the twelfth century.
In Europe, paper began a centuries-long battle for prominence with parchment until the invention of movable type in the fifteenth century led to a steep rise in literacy and a demand for the production of books that parchment could no longer satisfy. The eighteenth century saw paper made from linen and cotton rags that were replaced by wood and other vegetable pulps in the early nineteenth century.
