Information about papermaking

One of the four great inventions in China. Outstanding achievements in the history of human civilization.

Function of paper

Paper is a sheet fiber product used for writing, printing, painting or packaging. Generally, it is made from the aqueous suspension of plant fibers through pulping, staggered combination on the net, preliminary dehydration, compression and drying. China was the first country in the world to invent paper. According to archaeological findings, during the Western Han Dynasty (from 206 BC to 8 BC), China already had hemp fiber paper. Rough quality, small quantity, high cost and unpopularity.

The invention of papermaking

/kloc-in 0/05, Cai Lun summarized the previous experience in Luoyang, the capital of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and improved papermaking, using bark, hemp head, rags and old fishing nets as raw materials. It greatly improves the production efficiency of paper quality, expands the source of raw materials for paper, reduces the cost of paper, opens up new prospects for paper to replace bamboo and silk, and creates favorable conditions for the spread of culture. Regarding the ancient records of Cai Lun's invention of papermaking, The Biography of Cai Lun in the Later Han Dynasty said: "Since ancient times, books and deeds have been compiled with bamboo tubes; People who use it are called paper. Expensive and simple, inconvenient for people. Lun intends to use bark, hemp head, cloth and fishing net as paper. " Later generations revered him as the inventor of China's papermaking.

In the Eastern Han Dynasty, Xu Shen talked about the origin of "paper" in his first well-organized and systematic dictionary Shuo Wen Jie Zi in China. He said: "paper" comes from the side, that is, from the side of silk. "At that time, the paper was mainly spun silk, which was completely different from the paper in the present sense. The invention, development and spread of paper also went through a tortuous process.

/kloc-after the invention of papermaking in 0/05, papermaking spread from Henan to other economically and culturally developed areas. Cai Lun sealed the Dragon Pavilion in Yangxian County, Shaanxi Province, and papermaking spread to Hanzhong area, and gradually spread to Sichuan. According to the folklore of Cai Lun's hometown Leiyang, Hunan, Cai Lunsheng had taught papermaking to his hometown before. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Shandong's papermaking was also relatively developed, and it was an expert in papermaking in Donglai County (now Yexian County) of Zuo Bo. In addition, paper and decorative books first spread to the northern minority areas through the Silk Road.

Since the Jin Dynasty, many famous painters and calligraphers have appeared in China, which greatly promoted the development of calligraphy and painting paper. For example, Wang Xizhi, a calligrapher in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, greatly improved the paper used for painting and calligraphy during the father-son period. Writing paper in the Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties was made of hemp and bamboo bark, coated with starch and white mineral pigments, and polished.

After the Sui Dynasty unified the north and south, the Tang and Song Dynasties inherited and developed hundreds of years of papermaking achievements, which opened the heyday of manual papermaking in the Tang and Song Dynasties: the popularity of calligraphy and painting and Buddhism in the Tang Dynasty increased the demand for paper, and the raw materials for papermaking expanded to rattan and mulberry bark. Painting and calligraphy paper is also coated with nitrate starch before waxing, and finally polished with coarse cloth or stone. Warp writing paper is also dyed yellow with phellodendron to avoid smoking. In the Northern Song Dynasty, Anhui used the method of night drying and late harvest to bleach bast fiber to make paper. The base paper was smooth, white and durable. In the Southern Song Dynasty, bamboo paper was abundant in southern China. Both Wang Anshi and Su Dongpo like to write with bamboo paper. They think that bamboo paper has bright ink color and bright brushwork, which was imitated by many literati at that time, thus promoting the development of bamboo paper. In the Song Dynasty, bamboo paper was not only abundant, but also rice and wheat straw was used to make paper. Su Yijian in the Northern Song Dynasty recorded that people in Zhejiang made paper pulp from wheat and rice stalks, and made paper with oil vines.

By the Ming Dynasty, the technology of making paper from bamboo in China had been perfected. At that time, Song's Tiangong systematically described the production process of making paper with bamboo, with illustrations of production equipment and operation process. This book has been translated into Japanese, French and English and spread to Japan and Europe. It is the earliest book in China that systematically describes papermaking technology.

After hundreds of years in Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, by the middle of Qing Dynasty, China's hand-made paper was quite developed, with advanced quality and various varieties, which became the material conditions for the development and spread of China culture for thousands of years.

The spread of papermaking

After China invented papermaking, paper books were first taken abroad, and then papermaking gradually spread abroad.

Papermaking began to spread eastward to Korea and Japan in the early 7th century (late Sui and early Tang Dynasties). In the 8th century, it was introduced to Samarkand, later Arabia and then Baghdad. 10 century to Damascus and Cairo; 1 1 century was introduced to Morocco; /kloc-was introduced to India in the 0/3rd century; From14th century to Italy, many cities in Italy built paper mills, which became an important base for the spread of papermaking in Europe, and then spread to Germany and Britain. /kloc-was introduced to Russia and Holland in the 6th century; /kloc-spread to Britain in the 0/7th century; It was introduced to Canada in the19th century. The invention and spread of papermaking greatly reduced the carrier cost of words and realized the popularization of knowledge among the common people, thus greatly promoting the development of science, technology and economy in the world.

In view of the unhealthy trend of trying to deny that Cai Lun was the inventor of papermaking and People's Republic of China (PRC) was the inventor of papermaking,1The 20th Congress of the International Paper History Association held in Malmedi, Belgium from August 65438 to August 22, 1990 unanimously recognized that Cai Lun was the great inventor of papermaking and People's Republic of China (PRC) was the inventor of papermaking. According to the textual research of Comrade Shi of the Editorial Committee of Luoyang Local Records. Paper House is located in the suburb of Luoyang, the ancient city of Han and Wei Dynasties. It was called Paper House in ancient times. The ancient Majian River passed through a section of the Paper River, and the original paper river inscription along the coast has been lost.

Related literature

According to historical records, Han and Emperor visited Gou Jian's home, and Gou Jian probably visited the paper mill here. Hezhizhuang (now divided into Qianzhizhuang and Houzhizhuang, located about 2000 meters east of Luoyang, the ancient city of Han and Wei Dynasties, facing Luohe) is probably the location of the paper mill in Han Dynasty. These two places have superior geographical environment for papermaking, and there are abundant papermaking resources (such as hemp and bamboo forest) nearby.

Ancient papermaking methods

Taking the method of making bamboo paper recorded in the ancient China classic "Tiangong Kaiwu" as an example, this paper introduces it. In ancient times, the steps of bamboo papermaking were as follows: 1. Chop bamboo, float it in the pond, chop it, put it in the pond, soak it for more than 100 days, decompose it with natural microorganisms, and wash off the green skin of bamboo.

2. Cook the bamboo obtained above, put it in a "pot" and cook it with lime for eight days and eight nights.

3. Take the treated bamboo out of the mortar, put it in the mortar and beat it with the mortar until the bamboo is smashed and looks like mud.

4. Throw the cloth into the curtain. Pour the mashed bamboo material into the sink and swing the bamboo material in the water with a bamboo curtain. The bamboo material becomes a thin layer and sticks to the bamboo curtain, and the remaining water flows down the water tank from the four sides of the bamboo curtain.

5. Cover the curtain to press the paper, and then repeat the curtain to make the wet paper fall on the board, thus making a piece of paper. In this way, the steps of placing materials and covering curtains are repeated, so that thousands of wet papers are stacked, and the boards are added to squeeze out most of the water.

6. Bake the wet paper over the fire. The equipment for baking paper is to build an alley with adobe bricks and make a fire in the alley. After the temperature of adobe brick rises, wet paper is pasted one by one and baked. After drying, the paper is obtained by uncovering the cover.

Modern papermaking methods

Modern papermaking procedures can be divided into pulping, preparation, papermaking, processing and other major steps.

1. Pulping is the first step in papermaking. Generally speaking, there are three ways to convert wood into pulp: mechanical pulping, chemical pulping and semi-chemical pulping.

2. The modulation of paper materials in the modulation process is another key point in papermaking, and the strength, color tone, printability and shelf life of the finished paper are directly related to it.

The common brewing process can be roughly divided into the following three steps: a. beating B. beating C. adding glue and filling.

3. The main work of the papermaking department in the papermaking process is to evenly interweave and dehydrate the tissue paper, and then dry, calender, roll paper, cut, sort and package, so the general process is as follows:

A screening of paper: the prepared paper is diluted to a lower concentration, and impurities and undissociated fiber bundles are screened again with the aid of screening equipment, so as to maintain the quality and protect the equipment.

B, the wire part makes the paper material flow out of the headbox on the circulating copper wire net or plastic net and evenly distribute and interweave.

C, the press department introduces the wet paper with the net surface removed between two rollers with felt cloth attached, and further dehydrates the wet paper through the extrusion of the rollers and the water absorption of the felt cloth, so that the paper is more compact, thereby improving the paper surface and increasing the strength.

D. Calendering Because the moisture content of the extruded wet paper is still as high as 52-70%, it can no longer be removed by mechanical force, so the wet paper is allowed to pass through the surface of many cylinders with hot steam inside to dry the paper.

E. Because the water content of the extruded wet paper is still as high as 52-70%, mechanical force can no longer be used to remove water, so the wet paper is allowed to pass through the surface of many cylinders with hot steam inside to dry the paper.

G. Cutting, sorting and packaging: take a plurality of rolls of paper whose front faces have been rolled into a tube shape, cut them into thin slices with a paper cutter, then manually or mechanically sort out the damaged or defiled thin slices, and finally pack every 500 sheets into a package (usually called a ream).

The invention and development of papermaking

Paper is the most commonly used item in our daily life. Whether reading, reading newspapers, writing or drawing, we all have to touch paper. Paper is also indispensable in the production of industry, agriculture and national defense industry. Today, there is no paper, which is unimaginable. Paper is a powerful tool and material for exchanging ideas, spreading culture, developing science and technology and production. Looking back at history, this important substance was invented by the working people in ancient China. Papermaking, compass, gunpowder and printing are also called the four great inventions of ancient science and technology in China, which are outstanding contributions made by our people to the development of world science and culture.

The original paper appeared as a new writing material. Before the invention of paper, things recorded in China were mostly tortoise shells, animal bones, epigraphy, bamboo slips, wooden slips and silk books. Since the beginning of this century, the material objects of Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Zhong Dingwen in Yin Dynasty have been unearthed continuously. Bamboo slips, wooden slips, silk books and silk paintings from the Warring States to the Qin and Han Dynasties have also been unearthed in recent years. However, Oracle bones are hard to get, stones and silks are heavy and expensive, and bamboo slips take up a lot of space, which is inconvenient to use. With the development of social economy and culture, it is urgent to find new writing materials that are cheap and easy to get. After long-term exploration and practice, plant fiber paper made of waste hemp materials such as hemp rope ends, rags and old fishing nets was finally invented.

With regard to the origin of papermaking, Ye Fan (398-445), a historian in the 5th century, once said that paper was invented by Cai Lun (62- 12 1), a eunuch in the Eastern Han Dynasty, in the 17th year of Yong Yuan (A.D. 105). However, the practice of archaeological excavations since this century has shaken Cai Lun's view that paper is an invention. 1933, the hemp paper of the Western Han Dynasty was unearthed at the Han Dynasty site in Luobnuoer, Xinjiang, more than a century before Cai Lun. 1957, ancient paper in the early Western Han Dynasty in the second century BC was unearthed again in Baqiao, the eastern suburb of Xi. Through the analysis and test in this paper, it is confirmed that it is mainly made of hemp and a small amount of ramie fiber. Following this, 1973 Jinguan Site in Juyan, Gansu Province and 1978 Han Dynasty cellar in Zhongyan Village, Fufeng, Shaanxi Province also unearthed hemp paper in the Western Han Dynasty. It is worth pointing out that in the ancient tomb of Fangmatan near Tianshui City, Gansu Province in 1986, map-drawn hemp paper from Wendi and Jingdi periods in the early Western Han Dynasty (from 179 BC to 1465438 BC) was unearthed, which is the earliest plant fiber paper found in the world. /kloc-in the winter of 0/990, more than 30 pieces of hemp paper were unearthed from the site of Western Han Station in Jiaohuang Tianshuijing, among which 3 pieces were written with words. These facts strongly show that as early as the second century BC, the working people in our country had invented papermaking, and the paper made at that time could already be used for writing.

However, the hemp paper in the early Western Han Dynasty still needs further improvement. In the second century, Cai Lun, who served in the Eastern Han Dynasty, supervised and organized the production of a batch of fine paper with sufficient manpower and material resources, which was presented to the court in the seventeenth year of Yongyuan, and papermaking was popularized in China. At the same time, the East Han Dynasty further utilized bark, especially Broussonetia papyrifera bark, to make paper, which expanded the source of raw materials. In this sense, Cai Lun appeared as a producer and promoter of good paper in history. These activities are objectively beneficial to the development of papermaking, so its role should not be completely obliterated.

According to our experimental research, the production technology of hemp paper in Han Dynasty is to soak raw materials such as hemp heads and rags in water to make them swell, then chop them up with an axe and then wash them with water. Then soaking and cooking with weakly alkaline plant ash water can be said to be the origin of alkaline chemical pulping technology in later generations. By cooking with alkali liquor, impurities such as lignin, pectin, pigment and oil in raw materials are further removed, rinsed with clear water and mashed. The mashed fine fiber is made into suspension pulp with water, and then the pulp is taken out with a paper leakage mould, and then it is dehydrated and dried to make paper. If the paper surface is wrinkled and astringent, it needs to be polished before writing.

The working people in the Han Dynasty used simple and ordinary equipment to regenerate textile waste into fiber raw materials and make plant fiber paper by chemical and mechanical processing methods, which is indeed an achievement worthy of great books in the history of chemistry and technology. There are two technical keys here. Firstly, the non-cellulose components in the fiber raw materials are removed by chemical methods, and then the pure cellulose macromolecules are chopped and split into filaments by strong tamping. The second is to design a porous plane screen to make the pulp stagnate on the screen surface. After most of the water is filtered out, the fiber containing a small amount of water will remain on the screen surface, and then it will be dried and dehydrated to form paper with certain mechanical strength. This flat screen is the paper machine, which is the original prototype of modern fourdrinier and rotary screen paper machines.

After the popularization of papermaking in China in the second century, paper became a strong competitor of silk books and bamboo slips. In the third and fourth centuries, paper has basically replaced silk and bamboo slips as the only writing material in China, which has effectively promoted the spread and development of science and culture in China. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties from the third to the sixth century, China's papermaking was constantly innovated. In terms of raw materials, in addition to the original hemp and paper, it is also expanded to use mulberry bark and rattan bark to make paper. In terms of equipment, the paper-making technology of the Western Han Dynasty was inherited, and more movable curtain bed paper molds appeared. A movable bamboo curtain is placed on the frame, which can repeatedly fish out thousands of wet papers and improve work efficiency. In processing and manufacturing technology, alkali liquor cooking and beating were strengthened, and the quality of paper was improved, and processed paper such as colored paper, coated paper and filler paper appeared.

Judging from the ancient paper of this period unearthed from the Stone Chamber in Dunhuang and Shaqi in Xinjiang, it can be said that the paper fibers are evenly knotted, the appearance is white and the surface is smooth, which can be described as "brilliant". In the 6th century, Jia Sixie also wrote two articles in Qi Yao Min Shu, which recorded the treatment of papermaking raw materials and the technology of dyeing yellow paper. At the same time, papermaking spread to China's neighboring countries, Korea and Viet Nam, which was the beginning of the spread of papermaking.

During the Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties from the 6th century to the10th century, besides hemp paper, bamboo paper, mulberry paper, rattan paper, sandalwood paper, Daphne paper, straw paper and Hsinchu paper also appeared in China. In the southern bamboo-producing areas, bamboo resources are abundant, so bamboo paper develops rapidly. Regarding the origin of bamboo paper, some people think that it began in the Jin Dynasty, but there is not enough literature and material evidence. From a technical point of view, bamboo paper should appear after the development of leather paper technology, because bamboo material is stem fiber, which is hard and difficult to handle, and it is unlikely to appear in Jin Dynasty. Bamboo paper should have originated after the Tang Dynasty, but it developed greatly in the Tang and Song Dynasties. It was not until the eighteenth century that bamboo paper appeared in Europe.

Paper-making areas in this period were all over the north and south. Because of the invention of block printing, the book printing industry has risen, which has promoted the development of paper industry, improved the output and quality of paper, and the price has been declining, and various paper products have spread to people's daily lives. Precious papers include "hard yellow" in the Tang Dynasty, "Cheng Xin Tang Paper" in the Five Dynasties, as well as water-grain paper and various artistic processing papers. There were many paintings in the Tang Dynasty, which reflected the improvement of papermaking technology.

10- 18 During the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, paper, mulberry paper and other paper and bamboo paper were particularly popular and consumed a lot. Bamboo curtains for papermaking mostly use thin bamboo strips, which requires that the beating degree of paper must be quite high and the produced paper must be very fine and symmetrical. Starch paste was used as a sizing agent in the pre-Tang dynasty, which had the function of filling and reducing the fiber sinking at the bottom of the pool. After the Song Dynasty, plant mucus was used as "paper medicine" to make the pulp uniform. The commonly used "paper medicine" is the extract of carambola and Abelmoschus manihot. This technology was adopted as early as the Tang Dynasty, but it became popular after the Song Dynasty, so that starch paste was no longer used.

At this time, there are many kinds of processing paper, and the use of paper is becoming more and more extensive. Besides painting, printing and daily use, China is the first country in the world to issue paper money. This kind of paper money was called "Jiaozi" in the Song Dynasty and continued to be issued after the Yuan and Ming Dynasties. Later, countries all over the world also issued paper money. Wallpaper, paper flowers, paper cutting, etc. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, it was also very beautiful for interior decoration, and it was sold at home and abroad. All kinds of colored wax paper, cold gold, clay gold, rib, clay gold and silver plus painting, decal paper, etc. , mostly enjoyed by the feudal ruling class, with high cost and quality above ordinary paper.

During this period, books about papermaking also appeared constantly. For example, Paper Spectrum in Song Dynasty, Paper Annotation Spectrum in Yuan Dynasty, Jun Shu by Wang in Ming Dynasty, especially Tiangong in Song Dynasty, have many records on ancient papermaking in China. The record of bamboo paper and leather paper in Thirteen Volumes of Heavenly Creations can be said to be a summary narrative. There is also a paper-making operation chart in the book, which is the most detailed paper-making record in the world at that time.

Taking bamboo paper as an example, it is pointed out in Tiangong Kaiwu: Before and after mango seeds, climb the mountain to cut bamboo, cut off five or seven feet, soak in pond water for a hundred days, and after processing and cleaning, remove the rough shell and green peel. Then wrap the pulp with good lime juice, put it in a yellow bucket for eight days and nights, take out the bamboo material, rinse it with clear water, use wood ash (plant ash water) pulp, cook it in a kettle, and water it with grey water. This will naturally stink for more than ten days. Take it out and put it in a mortar, pound it into a mud surface, and then make pulp and paper. These records are basically the same as the process of making bamboo paper by folk methods later.

Papermaking was introduced to Japan through Korea in the seventh century and to Arabia through Central Asia in the middle of the eighth century. When the first paper-making workshops were organized in Arab newspapers (now Baghdad, Iraq), Damascus (now Damascus, Syria) and Samarkand, it was built after China paper workers personally taught the technology. Hemp paper originally made in Arabia takes rags as raw materials and adopts the technology and equipment of China. After mass production, Arabic paper was continuously exported to European countries, and papermaking was subsequently introduced to Europe from Arabia.

/kloc-In the 20th century, Europe first established paper mills in Spain and France, and in the 3rd century, it also established paper mills in Italy and Germany. By the 16th century, paper had swept all over Europe, eventually completely replacing the traditional sheepskin and Egyptian papyrus, and since then paper has gradually spread all over the world.

During the two thousand years from the 2nd century BC to the early 18th century AD, China's papermaking has been at the advanced level in the world. China's ancient papermaking technology, equipment and technology provided a complete technical system for all countries in the world. All the main technical links of the modern machine papermaking industry can be found in the original development form from the ancient papermaking in China. China's traditional papermaking methods have been followed by countries all over the world for more than 1000 years.