THE TECHNOLOGIST, 



ON THE PAPER MANUFACTURE. 



BT BENJAMIN LAMBERT. 



We question very much, whether there be any industry in this country 

 of a more interesting character as regards its antecedents than the manu- 

 facture of paper, stretching back as it does into antiquity so remote as 

 to defy the efforts of the most learned antiquarians to discover its origin. 

 It is supposed, however, that the infant manufacture was cradled on the 

 Nile, when Egypt was in the meridian of her dynastic glory, and, at all 

 events, must have occupied a distinguished position as a national indus- 

 try during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, who, in a letter speaking 

 of Alexandria, says — " In this rich and opulent city nobody is seen idle ; 

 some are employed in the manufacture of cloth, some in that of writing 

 paper;" that it was afterwards practised in Sicily, and carried from 

 thence to Rome. The Papyrus Antiquorum of Linn, is universally recog- 

 nised as the fibre-yielding sedge, from which the Egyptians of old made 

 the rolls which serve still to commemorate the events of that ancient 

 period. And it is rather a singular reflection that, after the lapse of so 

 many centuries, the paper-makers of our own day are looking to the 

 marshes of Southern Europe for a supply of fibre in aid of the refuse of 

 the human wardrobe. 



Much learned discussion has arisen on the probable date when the 

 Egyptian papyrus was supplanted as a paper-making material by cotton 

 or linen fibre. That cotton paper was in use in the eleventh century 

 may be inferred from the year 1050 being the date of a manuscript 

 written on cotton paper, and preserved in the Imperial Library at Paris. 

 In the early part of the twelfth century it would appear to have been 

 well known ; and in one instance, at all events, its fragile character duly 

 appreciated, as, according to Montfaucon, Roger, King of Sicily, in a 

 diploma written in 1145, says that he had renewed on parchment a 



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