Ulman Stromer

fl.

1300s

German inventor who established a paper mill in Nuremberg, Germany, after seeing similar paper mills in Italy. Stromer's mill used water-powered hammers to beat the material, a method that the Chinese had already developed but was not brought to Europe until Muslims established paper mills in Spain. Mills similar toStromer's enabled the success of Gutenberg's printing press in the mid-fifteenth century and the cultural revolution that followed.