95: Paper
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| Egyptian Papyrus |
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| Egyptian Papyrus |
You cannot have a list with the pencil on it if you are not
going to place its counterpart on the same list. The invention of paper is yet
one of those inventions that I believe is taken for granted. Paper is still
being used today even in our digital world. (Please don’t start singing
“Material Girl”, cause you know I just did.)
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| Daphne Tree |
Writing a record of time has always been one cornerstone of
human existence. We wrote on cave walls, drew in mud that hardened only to be
found thousands of years later, and we even scribed in stone tablets. It really
was the Egyptians that can take create in popularizing paper. The
Egyptians used the bark and the pulp the papyrus tree to create a writable surface.
This is how we get the noun paper (papyr-us). Papyrus is really in a list of other fibers
that were used as paper. The mulberry, fig and daphne trees were also used to
create a writable surface. Papyrus was used not only in the Mediterranean
region such as in Rome and Greece, but the Chinese also used a form of
paper.
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| Papyrus |
The Chinese tradition creates Ts'ai Lun (150CE) as the
developer of paper who was deified and is the god of papermakers.
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| Ts'ai Lun |
In our modern world, paper is everywhere. Because of the
industrialization of paper making, today we use paper in making cups and
plates. We take paper and treat it with a chemical which response to low heat
radiation giving use thermal paper. OCR, copier paper, and yes, loose-leaf
notebook paper complete with three holes to go into a binder. Its amazing to
imagine what the world of yesterday looked like without emptying pockets without
little pieces of paper falling out. Think about this: what would gum be
packaged in without paper?
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