Ts' ai Lun

Paper: A substance made from wood
pulp, rags, straw, or other
fibrous material, usually in thin sheets,
used to bear writing or printing,
for wrapping things, etc.

How to make

paper

Ts'ai Lun was creator of paper. He lived and served as an official at the Chinese Imperial Court at the Han Dynasty in China at about 1800 years ago. In or about 105 A.D., he presented Emperor Han Ho Ti with samples of paper. He made is paper by mixing finely chopped mulberry bark and hemps rags with water, mashing it flat, and then pressing out water and letting it dry in the sun. Chinese records do mention and credit Tsai, Lun with the invention of paper. His name is well known in China. Tsai, Lun was a eunuch. Because he was an officer, he had the access to lots of resources, including money and human resources, for papermaking research. He was promoted by the Emperor for his invention and became wealthy. Later he got involved in palace intrigue, which led to his downfall. Finally he ended his life drinking poison.

For centuries, people tried to discover better surfaces on which to record
their thoughts. Almost everything imaginable was tried. Wood, stone, ceramics,
cloth, bark, metal, silk, bamboo, and tree leaves were all used as a writing surface
at one time or another.The word "paper" is derived from the word "papyrus," which
was a plant found in Egypt along the lower Nile River. About 5,000 years ago,
Egyptians created "sheets" of papyrus by harvesting, peeling and slicing the plant into strips.
The strips were then layered, pounded together and smoothed to make a flat, uniform sheet. No major changes in writing materials were to come for about 3,000 years. In about 105 AD, a chinese man by the name Ts'ai Lun presented his work of paper making to Emperor Han Ho Ti.

Since the invention of writing, people had been trying to come up with something easier to write on than papyrus or parchment, and also something easier and cheaper to make. But it took 3000 years to come up with paper! Paper seems to have been invented around 100 BC in China. In 105 AD, under the Han Dynasty emperor Ho-Ti, a government official in China named Ts'ai Lun was the first to start a paper-making industry. Ts'ai Lun seems to have made his paper by mixing finely chopped mulberry bark and hemp rags with water, mashing it flat, and then pressing out the water and letting it dry in the sun. He may have based his idea on bark cloth, which was very common in China and also made from mulberry bark. Ts'ai Lun's paper was a big success, and began to be used all over China.