Part II 



On Papermaking 

 In the United States and England 



This part of the book is chiefly concerned with papermaking devices, both hand and 

 machine, and their builders, but Sellers's observations are of much wider significance 

 to an understanding of the development of machines for manufacturing operations 

 of all kinds. 



His visit to England in 1832, where he was entertained and treated with unusual 

 openness by some of the outstanding mechanicians of the day, enabled him to observe 

 several prominent shops and mills and to compare English with American practice. 

 Although he was only 24 years old, the relative ease with which he gained the confi- 

 dence of and obtained information from such cautious men as John Dickinson and 

 Bryan Donkin suggests that Sellers was an intelligent — even expert — listener to 

 detailed technical descriptions, and that the information that he had brought with 

 him from America was of great interest, even if its influence upon English practice 

 was hardly measurable. 



The transition from hand to machine papermaking occurred during 20 years or so 

 after 1815. Dickinson and Donkin, both of whom figure prominently in these pages, 

 were the leading designers and builders of papermaking machinery. To Donkin 

 goes particular credit for developing and perfecting the Fourdrinier type of machine, 

 while Dickinson carried on a parallel development of the evacuated-cylinder type. 



In America, before he was 10 years old, Sellers was gaining experience with 

 machine papermaking on the Brandywine Creek near Wilmington, Delaware, in the 

 mill of Coleman Sellers's good friend Thomas Gilpin, who had copied the Dickinson 

 cylinder machine. 



George Escol's boyhood had been fairly surrounded by the tools and talk of 

 papermaking. His grandfather Nathan Sellers, his father Coleman, and his brother 

 Charles all were engaged in the making of wire paper molds and the fashioning of 

 watermarks for handmade paper while carrying on their numerous other mechanical 

 enterprises. Although the principal innovations by the Sellerses in papermaking 

 equipment were the annealing of small sizes of wire in the absence of a destructively 

 oxidizing atmosphere and the improvement of wire mold making, it is likely that few 

 mechanically advanced ideas escaped the alert and well-connected family, 



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