Paper
2 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Paper. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a thin, flexible sheet of compacted vegetable fiber such as is used ordinarily for writing, printing, and various other purposes. The gray material with which the wasp builds a nest is genuine paper. An ingenious boy can make paper by grinding a piece of spruce or poplar on a wet grindstone until a handful of fiber has been collected. Boil this fiber for two or three hours; pound it with a hammer until it is fine; then throw a little of it in a kettle of hot water and let it settle until the floating fiber forms a film. The film may be lifted off by means of a sieve or a piece of wire cloth. Place the film between two pieces of blotting paper and run it through a clothes wringer. If the operation is a success the fine fibers of the wood will felt, forming a sheet of coarse paper. The process thus described is essentially the plan followed in the four thousand or more paper mills of the world. It has been found that almost any vegetable fiber made fine enough will felt and form paper. Cotton, jute, hemp, flax, Spanish esparto grass, straw, and various woods are used. After cotton cloth has been worn out for clothing, the rags still make good paper. The finest writing papers are made from linen. The newspapers of North America and northern Europe are printed chiefly on paper made from wood pulp. Spruce and poplar are the favorite woods. Timber is cut into sticks or blocks, usually about two feet in length. The sticks are stripped of bark by means of a sharp blade, managed much after the manner of a turning lathe. Knots and imperfections are cut out, usually with an axe. The blocks are converted into pulp by means of a grindstone set in a steel case. A current of water prevents the wood from charring and carries away the fiber as fast as it is torn off. The escaping pulp lodges on a wire sieve through which the water drains off. As fast as the pulp accumulates, it is rolled up into bundles of about twenty-five or fifty pounds. Figures for 1908 indicate that the pulp-makers of the United States made 4,655,688,000 pounds of pulp in that year. They used 3,661,176 cords, chiefly of spruce and poplar wood, valued as wood at $26,000,000 and as pulp at $90,000,000. A separate supply of pulp is made by a chemical process. Chips are boiled in a solution of sulphurous acid until they are disintegrated. The two kinds of pulp are mixed together in an immense churn or beater in the proportion of about three parts of ground pulp to one of sulphite pulp. To each thousand pounds of pulp, the expert adds some rosin, or similar material, just enough to give the slightest degree of stickiness, and some aniline blue such as the housewife puts into her wash water to make her clothes white. The mass is then churned by powerful machinery and pressed through knives until the fiber is so fine and short as to be hardly recognizable. In this condition, it is mixed with water and passes into a long vat, the longer the better. The content of the vat has the appearance of milky water. An endless sieve or apron, running on bearings, gathers a film of the fiber and carries it out of the vat to a series of rollers. An endless web of paper leaves the apron and passes through almost numberless pairs of rollers. It is compacted, pressed, dried, and polished; and is wound up finally at the far end of a long building in a roll ready for the power press of the newspaper office. A roll of this sort weighing 4,000 pounds was exhibited at the Buffalo Exposition. It was a continuous sheet of paper, 152 inches wide and six miles in length. A machine manufactured in Edinburgh in 1905 for a Swedish paper mill is designed to produce a continuous web of paper 150 inches wide at a rate of 500 feet per minute. It is estimated that the world's annual product of wood paper is not far from 18,000,000,000 pounds annually. For small newspaper offices the web of paper is cut into sheets as fast as it comes from the paper-making machines. There are many details relating to the use of chemicals, sizing, the use of clay to fill up the texture of the paper, tinting, water marking, and many devices for cleaning and pulping rags and old rope, which it is unnecessary to describe here. Handmade paper is made in the same way, except that the web is lifted from the vat in small sheets and manipulated by hand. The finest grades are handmade. Tissue paper requires greater skill and care, of course, than wrapping paper, but the processes are practically the same. The paper of which United States currency is made comes from a mill at Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Fine silk threads are mixed in the pulp to give strength and prevent counterfeiting. So far as known, the first people to make paper by grinding up vegetable matter into a pulp and then spreading it on water to form a sheet were the Chinese. This method was in vogue among them two or three centuries at least before Christ. Strangely enough, they have not improved their methods. The printing paper still used by the Chinese court for its official bulletin is very crude indeed. A fine quality of oriental paper is made from the bamboo. It is believed that paper making was brought into the western world by the Saracens. They established a famous paper mill at Damascus. The first paper mill in Europe was built by them in Spain. Paper making began in France about 1189; in Germany about 1380. The English pride themselves on paper made as early as 1330. The first paper mill in the New World was built by William Rittenhouse. It was erected in 1690 at Germantown, now a suburb of Philadelphia. Egypt, the home of the papyrus which gives its name to paper, has no paper mills. The United States, one of the youngest of nations, makes one-half of the world's paper. Our paper product for 1907 was valued at over $188,000,000. We sell about $7,000,000 worth abroad annually. England and Australia are our best customers. The Sunday morning papers of America require the pulp from sixty acres of forest. Canada has 450,000,000 acres of spruce suitable for pulp, and exports paper to the value of $1,250,000 a year. Paper pulp is used in the manufacture of car wheels, binder bolts, paper boxes, carpet lining, pressed buckets, tubs, bricks for paving, roofing tile, blackboards, and boards. Telegraph poles made of rolled sheets of paper are light and last well. The Japanese make clothing, parasols, window frames, lanterns, handkerchiefs, and sandals of paper. The Germans make pressed paper barrels, boxes, vases, and milk bottles. In Norway there is a church large enough to seat a thousand people. It is built even to the belfry of compressed paper. Some "straw" hats are made of strips of water-proof paper dyed to imitate straw. It is estimated that the world's consumption of paper is increasing at the rate of 200,000 tons a year. In 1908 the director of the Paper Union of Vienna prepared an address on the paper production and consumption of the world. According to this authority, over 9,000 paper machines are at work. The world's production, all kinds of paper included, for the year named was approximately: Country. . . . . Tons. Germany 1,360,000 United Kingdom 880,000 France 560,000 Austria-Hungary 400,000 Russia and Finland 280,000 Sweden 240,000 Norway 120,000 United States 3,200,000 Canada 240,000 Other countries 720,000 Total. . . . . 8,000,000 So far as the consumption of paper is an index of enlightenment, Canada leads the world. The consumption stated in pounds per person, all kinds of paper counted, is approximately: Country. . . . . Lbs. per Person. Canada 62.7 United Kingdom 55.0 Sweden 52.8 United States 49.5 Germany 43.4 Norway 37.2 Switzerland 33.0 France 30.8 Austria-Hungary 24.2 Belgium 24.2 Europe, average 22.0 See Papyrus ; Book ; Printing Press; Newspaper ; Periodical ; Parchment
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a material made in thin sheets from a pulp of rags, esparto grass, straw, wood or other fibers, and used for writing or printing on, or for wrapping. The earliest paper was doubtless that made from the Egyptian papyrus, whence all similar writing material is named. Many books and newspapers have been printed entirely of one material, such as bamboo, straw, jute, Phormium tenax, maize leaves, esparto, etc. In Japan a species of mulberry osier is grown specially for its bark for paper making. Only two vegetable fibers have come into general use for paper making; these are esparto and wood pulp. The best sources of fiber are linen and cotton rags for white paper and hempen cordage for brown. A caustic soda or soda-ash is required in the preparation of many fibers. Raw fibers may be divided into four classes: (1) that which is easily reduced and easily bleached; (2) that which is difficult to bleach; (3) that which is difficult to reduce but easily bleached; and (4) that wherein perfect bleaching effects the integrity of the fiber. The longer the fibers and the more intricate the mixture of them when wet, the stronger will be the sheet of paper when dry. The culms of various cereal where obtainable; grasses are employed loyed rice straw in Asia, wheat, oat, and other kinds of straw in Europe. Straw was used a century ago for paper making, but its extensive use is of comparatively recent date. The deficiency in the supply of rags and the absence of any cheap substance to supplement esparto have led to a great run on wood pulp for the paper mills in most countries. Its manufacture and use dates practically back only to about 1870; indeed its general adoption may be referred to 10 years later. The conifers giving the strongest and toughest fiber seem to be best adapted for conversion into pulp, though many other species are used. The production has centered chiefly in America and the two Scandinavian countries, Norway and Sweden. They also make a large quantity of paper and pasteboard for export. Wood pulp is now the principal ingredient in cheap paper. It is deficient in fiber, but a moderate admixture of rags, esparto, or other fibrous material strengthens it. Much of the paper made is used up a second time. Cotton and linen rags are the mainstays of the paper maker, and all countries draw largely on these waste substances. In order to reduce the price many makers introduce into their pulp sawdust and various mineral matters, such as kaolin or china clay. The varieties of paper made are chiefly the following four classes: (1) news and printing papers; (2) writing papers of various kinds, blue, cream and yellow laid, and wove and tinted, and for account books, etc.; (3) wrapping or packing papers, brown and purple, heavy manila for cartridges and bags; (4) miscellaneous, such as light copying, tissue, and pottery papers, blotting and filtering, cigarette, etc. Lastly, there are all kinds of cardboards and millboards made. The principal kinds of papers embrace 2,000 names of various kinds and qualities. In 1772 there were 60 varieties of paper made from as many different materials, and 10 or 12 years later the number had been extended to 103. In those days all paper was manufactured by hand, each sheet separately. The rags were pulped in mortars by trip-hammers, and several days were required to turn out a sample of dry finished paper. The workman dip dipped a rectangular sieve or mould into the vat and deposited the sheet of fluid pulp on a piece of felt to dry. This simple mode of manufacture, which is still largely practiced in Holland and Italy, has been superseded very generally by continuous machines, and only a small quantity of paper for special books, editions de luxe, etc., besides a superior writing, bank-note, and drawing paper is now made by hand. The various machines for making paper in continuous lengths are wonderful productions of mechanical skill. These machines consist of contrivances for causing an equal supply of pulp to flow on an endless wire-gauze apron, which revolves and carries on the paper till it is received on an endless sheet of felt, passing around and between large couching cylinders. At the Pittsburgh Exhibition there was a roll 14 miles long, 18 inches wide, and weighing 2,658 pounds. Some of the machines are 75 to 100 feet long and 120 inches wide, requiring a building to themselves, and making a sheet of paper 7 feet in width. In the United States, for fine book-work, the paper receives a white coating after it has been made; the finish thus given co the surface renders possible the illustrations seen in our best magazines. The productive power of a modern papermaking machine is very great; it moves at a rate of from 20 to 200 feet per minute, spreading pulp, couching, drying and calendering as it goes, so that the stream of pulp flowing in at one end is in two minutes passed out as finished paper at the other. Paper Production of the World. In been made in paper manufacture. The first mill was established in 1600 on ground now included within Philadelphia. In 1770 there were 40 paper mills in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, and only three or four in New England. In Great Britain and Europe there are over 3,000 mills; Canada has, in recent years become a chief producer of pulp for paper. In 1918 the product in that country was valued at $119,309,434. In 1919 nearly 150,000 tons were exported. The United States leads all nations in paper production, between 9 and 10 million tons annually. In 1909 newsprint paper was included in the free tariff list. Much of the wood pulp was obtained from Canada until the war when shortage of help made it necessary to obtain the material from Scandinavia. The blockade cut off this supply and paper prices in the United States rose to prohibitive figures. In 1919 and 1920 the United States Government warned great users of paper that they must reduce their demands on the market supply. The production of newsprint paper in 1919 was over 1,000,000 tons.