WOOD PULP AND PAPER 21 



adelphia. The first paper mill in New England was built by a company 

 which was granted the sole privilege in the vicinity of Massachusetts for 

 ten years, following 1728. 



Until the early part of the 19th century, sheets of paper were made 

 entirely by hand, sheet by sheet. Prior to this a device for making paper 

 in an endless web was invented by Louis Nicolas Robert in France, but 

 it was not put to practical use until developed in England by Henry 

 and Sealy Fourdrinier, who perfected the machinery now universally 

 known as the Fourdrinier wire, which is the basis of modern paper- 

 making. This will be described later in this chapter. 



It is said that the use of wood for making paper dates from as recently 

 as 1840 when Keller patented his process in Germany for a wood-pulp 

 grinding machine. It was not, however, until 1854 that the process was 

 placed upon a commercial basis. It was introduced in this country by 

 Warner Miller in 1866. 



The manufacture of so-called chemical pulp, which has a still greater 

 possibility for the future than ground wood pulp, dates back to the year 

 1867. Tilghman is generally given credit for the discovery of the disin- 

 tegrating action of sulphurous acid upon wood. This was the basis of 

 the invention of making chemical wood pulp by the sulphite process. 



Within comparatively recent years the sulphate and soda processes 

 of reducing wood fibers to the form of pulp have been developed. The 

 sulphate process was first attempted in Sweden and has great possibilities 

 before it in the utilization of woods and saw-mill waste in coimection with 

 the exploitation of some of our most abundant woods, such as southern 

 yellow pine and Douglas fir. 



With the rapid increase in the demands for wood pulp for all grades 

 of paper, other features including forms of machinery and processes of 

 pulp making have been devised to keep pace with the situation. In 

 1879 the average price of all forms of paper was $122 per ton, whereas 

 in 1909 it was only $56 per ton. 



To the development of engineering and chemistry is attributable 

 more than to anything else, the remarkable progress of this industry. 

 The discovery and improvements in the manufacture of paper pulp 

 by the three chemical methods of reducing the wood fiber; the sulphite, 

 soda and sulphate processes, and the use of the bleaching power of 

 chlorine have made possible the use of a large variety of woods and the 

 production of great quantities of pulp on a commercial scale. 



