It is the conclusion now accepted generally that the Chinese made and used paper for writing purposes from a remote period of the past—from before the beginning of the Christian Era. "The Chinese are credited with the discovery of the art of paper-making by the use of fibers reduced in water to a pulp. Their raw materials were the inner bark of the mulberry tree, bamboo, rice straw, rags, etc."29

Paper was distinguished from the papyrus in that the substances from which it was made were not used in their natural state, as the papyrus was, but were manufactured from the raw material which was first reduced to a pulp, then disposed in sheets, and subsequently finished for use. In lapse of time many different kinds of substances were employed as raw material or the basis of the finished product. At the Paris Exhibition in 1889, a paper-maker showed more than sixty webs, or rolls, of paper, each made from a different vegetable fibre: and sample-books have been published which were composed of several hundred leaves, all of different fibre.30 It is somewhat the "irony of fate" that no account of the origin of paper has been reliably recorded. Much of the reputed history of the art, or the invention, is only conjectural. The fact is that, however remote the time and place of its beginning, paper first became available to the world of letters in the eighth century. The Arabs, having acquired the art of making it from China (through Chinese prisoners, it is said) brought its manufacture into Arabia in the eighth century and, later, carried it into Europe by way of northern Africa. The comparatively large number of Arab manuscripts, preserved from the ninth century, is evidence of the extent to which paper was adopted and used for their literary, scientific, and religious records.

The Moors by their conquest of Spain in the eighth century brought their civilization and its benefits into western Europe and, at a later time—at about the twelfth century—introduced the manufacture of paper therein. The industry spread, later, from Spain into Italy and Sicily, and came eventually into the hands of the Christians, under whose less skillful manipulations it suffered deterioration in quality. At a still later date, its manufacture extended into southern and western Germany and into the Netherlands, England, and France.

Cotton paper was first manufactured from the natural product; but later, as the industry was extended to regions where cotton was not grown and into which it was not imported, other substances were used instead of the raw cotton. "In Spain," it is said, "flax was the first material used, then cotton." The practice of mixing rags—first woolen, then cotton, and later linen—gradually came into use. Near the close of the eleventh century (1085) is designated as the date when rags were first used for paper in Spain; linen paper appeared in 1100. "From the time rags began to be used in Europe they rapidly displaced other materials on account of the double use of the fibre composing them (used first for clothing or domestic purposes). Rags held sway in the paper industry for many centuries, but not entirely to the exclusion of numerous other materials."31

Linen paper, though known much earlier, came into general use in the fourteenth century. It was manufactured not only in response to the demand for improvement which characterizes all inventions but because linen was then less expensive than cotton. The earliest existing document on paper is a deed of King Roger of Sicily, 1102 A.D. There are other documentary records of Sicilian kings during the twelfth century. "The manufacture of paper from linen rags," says Thalheimer, "was a humble but essential antecedent to the art of printing, for the costliness of parchment or vellum was as effectual a barrier to the multiplication of books as the labor of transcribing them." Even before the Christian Era, the cost of books was largely the cost of the material—papyrus—upon which they were mostly written. Mr. Putnam suggests that "if printing had come into Europe in the first century, the world might to-day be buried under the accumulated mass of its literature"—no, not unless the invention of paper had been coterminous or had preceded.

All other and earlier materials for the embodiment and preservation of literature were eventually superseded by the manufacture of paper. Concerning the displacement of other materials, there is good authority for the claim that "in the second half of the fourteenth century the use of paper for all literary purposes had become well established in all western Europe; and in the course of the fifteenth century it had gradually superseded vellum. In manuscripts of this latter period it is not unusual to find a mixture of vellum and paper, a vellum sheet forming the outer and inner leaves of a quire while the rest are of paper."32

And thus the invention of paper and the successive improvements in its quality consequent upon the improved methods of its making, prepared the way for the printing-press—an invention the importance of which is beyond estimate and the relation of which to literature baffles comparison. But the manufacture of paper, notwithstanding the fact that it has shared in many and important improvements, continued to be made laboriously by hand up to the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The manufacture of paper has now reached a stage, it would almost seem, of unimprovable excellence. In what is known as the "India" paper there is combined, to a superlative degree, the paper-maker's science with the artist's skill. It is called "India" paper "owing to the prevailing tendency to describe as 'Indian' everything coming from the Far East," whence it was brought to England as early as 1841. This paper is not only thin and light but also tough and strong and has an opacity which makes it ideal for the printing of books (especially the Bible) where it is desirable to reduce the weight and bulk without diminishing the size of type or sacrificing beauty of typography and serviceability. It combines maximum durability and capacity with minimum dimensions and weight. Two facts will illustrate the foregoing observation: (1) There is an edition of the Bible, containing the Authorized Version complete in every particular, reduced within the dimensions of one and a-quarter, seven-eighths, and one-half an inch—or a little less than fifty-five one-hundredths of one cubic inch. It is hardly necessary to say that it can be read only by the aid of a magnifying lens. (2) And in an advertising booklet setting forth the excellencies of an edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica there is given a remarkable test of the capacity of the India paper to endure severe usage. A sheet from a volume was folded in strips and tied in knots, drawn through a lady's finger ring, crumpled into a tight ball, then opened out and ironed to its original state of finish.

The tests to which the "India" paper was subjected at the Paris Exposition in 1900 also show its most remarkable capacity. In those tests a volume of 1,500 pages was suspended for several months by a single leaf as thin as tissue and, at the close of the exhibition, it was found that the leaf had not started, the paper had not stretched, and the volume closed as well as ever. A strip of this paper, three inches wide, sustained a weight of twenty-eight pounds before yielding. This indicates its extreme tensile capacity. By the use of this paper a book of a thousand pages may be brought within the limits of three-quarters of an inch in thickness—the paper being of such degree of opaqueness as to make possible a beautiful typography on both sides of the sheet and of such strength and durability as to sustain long continued use. The following is a publisher's advertisement of a teacher's Bible: "Printed on genuine India paper, which measures only five-eighths of an inch to 1,000 sheets, making a beautiful, light-weight, convenient book." The fine editions of the Bible (for use and not as a curiosity of the printer's art) and the great Encyclopedia Britannica, printed on India paper are conspicuous examples and embody both the paper maker's science and the printer's art.