HISTORICAL EVENTS

EVANA ELIRICA ALIYAH

X MIPA 4
SMA NEGERI KOTA TANGERANG SELATAN
 The
Invention
of
paper
 THE INVENTION OF PAPER :
THE INTRO
Since the invention of writing, people had been trying to come up with
something easier to write on than papyrus or parchment, and also something
easier and cheaper to make.
But it took 3000 years to come up with paper! Paper was invented
around 100 BC in China. In 105 AD, under the Han Dinasty emperor Ho-Ti,
a government official in China named Ts’ai Lun was the first to start a
paper-making industry.
 THE INVENTION OF PAPER:
HOW TS’AI LUN MADE PAPER
Ts’ai Lun seems to have made his paper by
mixing finely chopped mulberry bark
and hemp rags with water, mashing it flat, and
then pressing out the water and letting it dry
in the sun.
He may have based his idea on bark cloth,
which was very common in China and also
made from mulberry bark. Ts’ai Lun’s paper
was a big success, and began to be used all
over China. With paper available, Budhist
monks in China began to work on ways of
mass-producing prayers. By 650 AD they
were block printing prayers.
THE INVENTION OF PAPER: PAPER
REACHES JAPAN, KOREA & IRAN
Even after people in China began to use paper, it took another thousand years before
people were using paper all over Eurasia. By the 400s AD, people in India were also
making paper, and by the 600s paper had reached Korea and Japan too.
With the expansion of the Islamic Empire into Pakistan about 700 AD, people in
the Abbasid Caliphate also began to use paper.
For the traders of the Silk Road, paper had a big advantage: it absorbed ink, so you
couldn’t erase it. That made forgery harder.
THE INVENTION OF PAPER: PAPER,
BOOKS, AND MOVABLE TYPES
At first traders bought their paper from China, Central Asia, and India. But by 800
AD Islamic manufacturers were making their own paper.
As paper reached West Asia, people began to make it into books, instead of the
scrolls that people used in China and India. That plan spread eastward, and by
about 1000 AD, people were making books even in China and India. To go with the
new book format, printers in China invented movable wooden type.
 THE INVENTION OF PAPER:
HISTORY OF PAPER IN EUROPE
AND MEXICO
Europeans were still using parchment, or buying paper at high prices from Egypt. But
that soon changed. By 1250 AD, Egyptian paper-making technology reached Italy, and
the Italians made good paper and sold it all over Europe.
Then the Black Death wrecked the paper industry in Egypt. In 1338,
French monks began to make their own paper. Europeans used water wheels
(destroying salmon runs) to power paper mills, so they could make paper more cheaply.
By the 1350s, Europeans were selling paper (along with other things
like sugar and sewing) to people in Norths Africa and Mamluk Egypt and West Asia.
By 1411 – nearly a millennium and a half after it was invented – people
in Germany began to produce their own rag paper out of linen rags. Once they had
learned to make paper, they became more interested in also learning about
Chinese printing, and a man called Gutenberg produced the first printed Bible in 1453.
(This rag paper was still much more expensive than modern paper, which is made from
wood with chemicals added).
By this time, people in the country of the Aztecs (modern Mexico) had also,
independently, invented paper. Their paper was made out of agarve plant fibers, and
people used it to make books.
THE INVENTION OF PAPER: NEW
INVENTIONS USING PAPER
Meanwhile, in China people were using paper in more and more different
ways. They were using paper for kites (650 AD), playing cards (800
AD), folding fans (1100s AD), and even, by the 1300s, for toilet paper.
And now, paper has been used all over the world!
THANK YOU