A BRIEF HISTORY OF PAPER
The intellectual development of mankind gathered speed with the discovery of paper. History of paper that goes back to thousands of years can be summarised as follows:
| • |
4000 B.C. |
Men were using clay, metal, wax and animal skin to write on. |
| • |
2400 B.C. |
Papyrus, assumed to be the ancestor of paper, started to be used by the Egyptians. |
| • |
105 A.D. |
Paper, in the sense we understand today, was made by herbal fibres by the Chinese. Chinese who kept the production methods as a secret for 500 years were using the fibre they obtained from black mulberries as the raw material. This secret started to spread in the world after the Arabs invaded China and took some paper producers to Baghdad. Meanwhile the technology developed and flax also started to be used as raw material in paper production. |
| • |
1150 |
Through the wanderers who travelled from Africa to Spain, Europeans met with paper in modern sense and the first paper mill was set up in Valencia. |
| • |
1276 |
First paper mill was set up in Italy. |
| • |
1348 |
First paper mill was set up in France. |
| • |
1390 |
First paper mill was set up in Germany. |
| • |
1690 |
The first paper mill of the continent was set up in Philadelphia; thanks to the English who settled in the States. |
| • |
1799 |
The Fourdrinier machine, a revolution in paper production, was invented by the English Fourdrinier brothers. The machine that rested on the idea of using endless sifter in draining water was a complete commercial and technological success. |
| • |
1809 |
Paper that was produced in plates started to be produced in coils. |
| • |
1826 |
The last strain of the process was overcome by starting to use vapour-heated cylinders in paper drying leaving the supply of raw material as the sole obstacle in mass production. |
In 19th century, by the discovery to use wood paste as raw material made paper production in great quantity possible. Again in the last century, development of mechanical and chemical cellulose production techniques helped the sector to reach its modern level today. Although almost all the phases of paper production have become mechanical today, the basic procedures in paper production are still the same.
The first paper mill of the Ottoman Empire that can definitely be proved to exist is the paper mill set up in Yalova in mid 18th century. After the Yalova Paper Mill, some documents refer to a paper mill in the Kağıthane (paper mill) region of Istanbul, at the period of Selim III (1789-1807). In 19th century, the first paper mill set up and the one that we have the most information about is the Beykoz Paper Mill that was established in 1804 and effectively operated for almost thirty years.
Our country that speeded up industrialisation efforts with the Declaration of the Republic, the first production of paper, in the real sense, was materialised in Izmit in 1936. Paper production that started in the leadership of SEKA has with the developments and addition of private sector productions reached a stage today to meet half of the total paper requirement. |
