Printing and Papermaking
Printing and papermaking were two key Chinese inventions that created two different communications revolutions in the premodern world, one in Asia and the other in Europe, by permitting the rapid transmission of information and ideas.
The Invention of Paper
The invention of paper is attributed to a court official of the Han dynasty. In 105 CE, the eunuch Cai Lun (d. 121) presented the Han emperor with a new writing material. With the rise of the first Chinese empire (the Qin dynasty, 221–206 BCE) came a rise in the imperial bureaucracy and an increasingly urgent need for new writing materials and methods of record keeping. The earliest Chinese records (sixteenth–eleventh centuries BCE) were etched on tortoise shells and animal bones. Later, these cumbersome materials were gradually replaced with wooden tablets and strips of bamboo. Though less costly, imperial record keeping generated hundreds of pounds of records on these materials. Though the inventor of paper remains anonymous, Chinese archaeologists in 1957 dated the earliest known sample of paper found in China to 49 BCE, over 150 years before Cai Lun's presentation.
This early sample of paper shares basic features of manufacture with today's machine-made paper. Early papermakers macerated old rope ends, rags, and fishing nets in water to free the component vegetable fibers, then sifted the solution with a screen to form thin sheets of matted fibers.
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