It is hard to imagine not having paper to write or print our words on, draw and paint on, cover our walls with, wrap, carry, cover, and pack things in. Paper is everywhere! Today, we use it in over 7,500 different ways (some say more than 14,000 ways).

Even our language is filled with references to paper. "Paper white" refers to something pure white. We "give a paper" when we report our research. Commercial paper is a negotiable instrument. Immigrants seek naturalization papers or working papers. The morning or evening papers report the news. We still use paper money; plastic and electronic money have yet to replace it. We read paperback novels. We wish we were paper thin. We celebrate our paper anniversary after being married for a year. Cardboard, a form of paper, is often used when describing a person who is stiff and somewhat shallow. And, of course, there is that "paper moon over the cardboard sea" in the old familiar song.

Technically, paper is a thin sheet of matted or felted fiber, usually vegetable, formed on a fine screen from a water suspension. This fiber sheet is then pressed and dried. All other methods of making a writing surface do not produce paper. For example, parchment and vellum are made from processed skins of sheep, goats, and calves. Tapa, amatl, and other bark fiber sheets are pounded and stretched, but they are not true paper.

Even the papyrus of the ancient Egyptians is not paper although our word "paper" does come from the word "papyrus." Papyrus was made by pasting together thin, slightly overlapping, strips of the pith of the water plants, Cyperus papyrus, then adding a second layer at right angles to the first. The layers are pressed and dried. To be true paper, whether made by hand or by machine, individual fibers are suspended in water, formed into a sheet on a screen, pressed, and dried.

Generally, historians believe that true paper was invented in China by the eunuch Ts'ai Lun in A.D. 105. This date and the inventor are possibly incorrect as samples of paper-like sheets have been dated at least 200 years before the 105 date. However, as early as the Fourth Century, Ts'ai Lun was acknowledged as the inventor of paper. The Chinese closely guarded the secret process of making paper for six hundred years, although they did export paper, used it on their walls, had paper money, and as early as 590 had enough paper to use it in their toilets.

The secret of papermaking was finally revealed to the West when Arabs captured some Chinese papermakers in Samarkand (now in Uzbekistan) in 751. Soon paper was made in Baghdad, Damascus and in Egypt. Although Egyptian papyrus had been made as early as 2500 B.C., paper soon supplanted this ancient writing surface. By A.D. 1000 the manufacture of papyrus had ceased and the papyrus plant was systematically removed from the waterways of Egypt. Not until after World War II was the plant reintroduced back into Egypt and the process of making papyrus, the writing surface, was rediscovered. Papermaking rapidly spread across the northern coast of Africa, and by 1085 the Moors were making paper in Toledo, Spain, the first known paper production in Europe.

The Chinese primarily used the inner bark fibers of the mulberry tree to make their paper. However, the Arabs did not have an adequate supply of these fibers in the Near East to satisfy the demand for the new writing surface. Within 100 years, the Arabs were making paper from cotton and linen rags---a very significant technological advancement and the only paper fiber source of consequence until the perfection of wood-fiber in the mid- 1800's. All manner of rags were used by the Arabs to make paper---even the linen wrappings of Egyptian Mummies, a practice, incidentally, that was continued by the English, French, and even the Americans until well through the Nineteenth Century.

The history of papermaking has many fascinating and wondrous stories, events, inventions, and inventors. The brief account above only touches on the initial development of paper.