The Spread of Papermaking Technology Into Europe
Overview
While technology has significantly altered the equipment used to manufacture paper, the basic operations remain the same. Papermaking involves a five-step process where suspended cellulose fibers are filtered onto a screen to form a sheet of fiber. The sheet is pressed, dehydrated, and then modified based on the intended use. After its invention, probably sometime before 100 B.C., knowledge of the papermaking processes slowly spread throughout the world. As more and more cultures discovered it, paper quickly became the medium of choice for recording written information.
Prior to the invention of paper, various kinds of materials were used as a means of recording written information. Different cultures used clay, wood, bark, leaves, stone, metal, papyrus, parchment, vellum, and cloth as recording mediums at one time or another. The Sumerians first developed early cuneiform writing in the form of pictographs on clay tablets before 4000 B.C. Other cultures from around the world adopted tree bark for record-keeping use in one way or another. Extensive use of bark for written records has been found in Pacific Rim cultures, Indonesia, America, and the Himalayas. Large tree leaves were used to record information in India and Asia, while rice pith paper was traditionally used in China.
This page contains 201 words.
The Spread of Papermaking Technology Into Europe article
Read the rest of this article.
This article contains 1,570 words
(approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page).
Order our Paper Article
