Paper Inventor Best answer on the web
The Chinese invented paper!
Doing a Google search for 'Chinese + invented paper' gives 603,000 results.
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=chinese+%2B+invented+paper&btnG=Google+Search
Doing a Google search for 'Egyptian + invented paper' serves up only 341,000 returns. Therefore China wins in an uncontrolled and non-scientific test! ://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=egyptian+%2B+invented+paper&btnG=Search
Seriously, it appears that China is the winner of your answer!
If you go by the definition of paper, which is a pulpy mixture of grasses, wood, rags, fibers, and pulp, with water, then China definitely wins. Chine wins especially if you don?t count papyrus, a predecessor to paper made by separating layers of papyrus plant, as paper.
Should you consider papyrus to be paper, then Egypt wins the honor of being the first place paper was used. But papyrus is NOT paper, and was used just as bark, leaves, and stone tablets were ? they carried the message, but they were not paper.
Should you consider paper an invention, as your question indicates, then China is the winner again, as the papyrus plant was not invented.
Answers.com defines paper as:
?A material made of cellulose pulp, derived mainly from wood, rags, and certain grasses, processed into flexible sheets or rolls by deposit from an aqueous suspension, and used chiefly for writing, printing, drawing, wrapping, and covering walls.? http://www.answers.com/paper&r=67
Merriam Webster says:
?A felted sheet of usually vegetable fibers laid down on a fine screen from a water suspension? http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary
?The need for paper began when man first started to record traditions, religion, and legal documents. Before papermaking, materials such as clay nails, papyrus, pounded bark, silk and parchment were used to record information, but none of these materials were either portable or cost-effective enough to mass-produce. Paper began in China as early as 200 BC, where the oldest known paper was used for a prayer found embedded in an adobe brick that was used to bless a home. The paper was made from recycled fishing nets, bamboo and hemp.? http://www.cpbis.org/industry/history.html
According to PaperOnline, it appears that China was the first place to use tapa paper. At least it is the earliest FOUND paper so far:
?Of all the writing and drawing materials that people have employed down the ages, paper is the most widely used around the world. Its name derives from papyrus the material used by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. Papyrus, however, is only one of the predecessors of paper that together are known by the generic term ?tapa? and are mostly made from the inner bark of paper mulberry, fig and daphne.?
?Tapa has been found extensively in nearly all cultures along the Equatorial belt and is made by what is possibly the oldest papermaking technique ? one still practised in some parts of the Himalayas and South East Asia. Indeed, recent archaeological excavations in China have revealed some of the oldest ?tapa? paper ever found which shows that paper was being produced in China before western records began.? http://www.paperonline.org/history/3000/3000_frame.html
According to Inventors.About, China is the first place paper was used.
?A courtier named Ts'ai-Lun, from Lei-yang in China, was the inventor of paper (not papyrus) circa 105 A.D. However, the word paper is derived from the name of the reedy plant papyrus, which grows abundantly along the Nile River in Egypt. Paper is made of pulped cellulose fibers like wood, cotton or flax. Papyrus is made from the sliced sections of the flower stem of the papyrus plant, pressed together and dried.? http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blpapermaking.htm
TAPPI, the Technical Association of worldwide pulp, paper, and converting industry gives credit to the Chinese:
?The Chinese government official and scholar is grinding up plants - mulberry bark, linen and hemp. He makes a big wet mush of separate fibers, then spreads it all out in a mat made of coarse cloth and a bamboo frame. It looks like he's got a mess on his hands, and chances are his family, friends and neighbors are making fun of him. But when he's done, and the sun has dried the matted material, he's made something really remarkable. Ts'ai Lun, 2,000 years ago, has made paper, and it will become one of the most important inventions ever.
Even though archaeological evidence shows that paper may have been made even a little earlier, Ts'ai Lun was the first to have his efforts recorded. Like many inventors through the centuries, he built upon the work of others. Okay, people had written even before paper was invented. They scratched on cave walls, painted too, and drew characters on wet clay. They even wrote on papyrus made from thinly-sliced papyrus reed which they glued together to make a sheet.? http://www.tappi.org/paperu/all_about_paper/paperHistory.htm
?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. The person credited with inventing paper is a Chinese man named Ts'ai Lun. He took the inner bark of a mulberry tree and bamboo fibers, mixed them with water, and pounded them with a wooden tool. He then poured this mixture onto a flat piece of coarsely woven cloth and let the water drain through, leaving only the fibers on the cloth. Once dry, Ts'ai Lun discovered that he had created a quality writing surface that was relatively easy to make and lightweight. This knowledge of papermaking was used in China before word was passed along to Korea, Samarkand, Baghdad, and Damascus.? http://www.wipapercouncil.org/invention.htm
?The first historical mention of paper is 104 A.D. in China. The Empress of China at that time loved books and wanted to have a lot of them made. At the time everything was written on silk scrolls which were extremely expensive and time consuming to make. She wanted something cheaper and easier to use and so she asked one of her servants, a gentleman by the name of Tsi Lun to come up with an alternative. He worked for over nine years experimenting with different things and finally came up with hemp, mulberry tree bark, silk and old fishing nets all ground up into a mushy pulp. I wonder how he ever thought of it; the history books don't say. The Empress was very pleased and Tsi Lun was elevated to a high rank in the court. Unfortunately for him, the Empress then asked Tsi Lun to spread malicious gossip about some of her enemies at court. When the Empress fell out of power, those people were extremely angry with Tsi Lun and he was either put to death or forced to commit suicide.
Strange, isn't it, how things go in the world? And, of course, all of this that I am sharing with you is just one version of history. Others will perhaps be able to give a different rendering. I have read many. I like the story of Tsi Lun. Most people agree on that one. But, as for the spread of papermaking as an art, well, there are different stories told. To gather such accounts and compare them falls within the discipline of "Historiography", the history of the writing of history. (If you ever want to scamble your brains and loose all concept of the solidity of reality, just study the hisotry writing of history.) The following, I believe, is most likely closest to the truth. Papermaking remained a secret Chinese art until around the year 700 A.D. when, during a war with China the Arab nations captured an entire town of papermakers and took them back to the middle east as prisoners where they were forced into labor making paper. The craft was learned a couple hundred years later by Western Europeans during the Crusades. Curiously, the Church in Western Europe initially banned the use of paper calling it a 'pagan art' believing that animal parchment was the only thing 'holy' enough to carry the Sacred Word. That strange prejudice lasted for more than 100 years, but they got over it.? (This may not be a highly reliable source, but it was interesting!) http://hometown.aol.com/ppreble2/history2.html
There you go! I certainly hope you liked the answer!
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Sincerely, Crabcakes
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Sincerely, Crabcakes
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