History of Paper by John Wayne Orton

History of Paper by John Wayne OrtonWhen I read the History of Paper by John Wayne Orton, I had to put it down for a while. It was a series of three short books all written about a quarter century ago. The following excerpt is on one of the topics.In The Paper Makers' Encyclopedia, by Bruce Jameson, we learn how the history of paper began. The population of the United States was very small in 1800. Papermaking methods were not as refined then as they are now.The wood from which the paper was made was cut down and burned to heat up the forests, which in turn created smoke that was pumped through the natural forests. The wood smoke was then combusted and released into the atmosphere where it cooled. When the smoke cooled, it dried into the paper.The people who made the paper at first used one kind of paper and then another. Each time a new type of paper came onto the market, they simply switched to that brand of paper. As time passed, the paper was used more often and eventually the tw o varieties became separated and known as different types of paper.In 1911, a Duke's Auction in New York sold paper that was made in the first village in America. The people who lived there got together and set out to find ways to make the paper more economically viable. They produced a new type of paper by adding millions of spores from a fungus and then repeated the process over again. After a few weeks, the paper was printed.These early papermakers named the paper based on the type of fungus that they used to create the paper. The paper is still called quill or mortarboard because of this. This paper is used worldwide for making things such as paperweights, cash register receipts, food wrappers, napkins, and even hospital sheets. Today, the American Paper Manufacturers Association is the largest non-governmental organization for the production of paper.In The Paper Makers' Encyclopedia, John Wayne Orton includes three topics on papermaking that are interesting. The first is an ar ticle on what has been called the 'Three M's,' which are milling, mending, and polishing. This topic is interesting because it deals with the art of producing what is referred to as American softwood.The second area of papermakers' work is on how to polish fabric. Here, John Wayne Orton discusses the use of wood shavings to remove dyes and stains from fabrics and bed sheets. The third topic is on the basics of filling ink tubes. This is an important topic because ink tubes must be refilled several times before the ink lasts longer.