134 



C. U. C. p. ALUMNI JOURNAL 



PAPER AND PAPERMAKING PROCESSES. 



By THOMAS J. KEENAN. 



In this, the second of two papers based upon a lecture delivered by the 

 author to the University Class of the College of Pharmacy, the chemistry 

 of paper-making is discussed, more particularly as applies to the use of 

 wood for paper pulp. The first paper appeared in the April number. 



For more than a century succeeding 

 the establishment of the first paper mill 

 in America, progress in the art of paper- 

 making was not marked by any great 

 mechanical improvement or industrial 

 advance. The primitive methods of 

 manufacture, characteristic of the art 

 since its introduction to the western 

 world, persisted, and the transition from 

 a simple craft to a highly technical in- 

 dustry which marks the recent history 

 of papermaking, did not begin until long 

 after the invention by Fourdrinier of the 

 continuous paper machine. 



With the spread of education, so pro- 

 nounced about the middle of the nine- 

 teenth century, the supply of rags for 

 papermaking purposes failed to meet the 

 increasing necessity for paper, which, at 

 the same time, was being produced in 

 larger and larger quantities by the new 

 machinery then coming into use ; and the 

 problem of discovering new sources of 

 papermaking material became one that 

 pressed more and more insistently for 

 solution. 



In 1840 a German, Friedrich Gottlob 

 Keller, made paper pulp by grinding 

 wood against a stone revolving in water, 

 and in 1845 the Government of Saxony 

 granted him a patent on his invention.- 

 The product was not used alone any 

 more then than now, rag pulp being 



mixed with it, as chemical pulp is in 

 present day practice. Keller's invention 

 was tried out in the United States at a 

 pulp mill in Curtisville, near Stock- 

 bridge, Mass., in 1867, and was applied 

 in that year to the manufacture of paper 

 by the Smith Paper Company of Lee, 

 Mass., who were able for a year or more 

 to keep the details of the process to 

 themselves. 



It should be noted that, except for 

 the use of chlorine as a bleaching agent, 

 following the discovery of the element 

 by Scheele in 1774, chemvstry found no 

 application in papermaking; it remained 

 a purely mechanical art until Burgess 

 and Watt invented the soda process of 

 reducing wood to pulp in 1852, or to be 

 historically exact, five years earlier, when 

 Montgolfier, a French papermaker, un- 

 dertook the manufacture of straw pulp 

 by boiling straw in caustic soda. , 



Although the scarcity of primary ma- 

 terial was relieved to some extent by 

 the discoveries of Keller and Burgess, ir 

 was not until Benjamin Chew Tilgh 

 mann, a Philadelphia engmeer, the in- 

 ventor of the sandblast, had conceived 

 the idea of boiling wood with sulphur- 

 ous acid to separate the cellulose fibers 

 from incrusting substances, that the raw 

 material problem was in a way of being 

 solved. This was in 1865, and a story 



