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The word paper "papyrus", in Latin, alludes to the Egyptian plant Cyperus papirus, of the family of the Cyperaceae, whose leaves served as a writing support to the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans
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The Chinese made their writing on a bamboo or silk patches. But the first system was very heavy, and the second very expensive. It was then that Cai Lun, observing that these materials were not the most suitable for manuscripts, turned his attention to the bark of the trees, to the hemp and to the undone cloths.
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The scarcity of paper prevented the dissemination of information, but later, the abundance of paper support was not the bottleneck for the production of texts, but the low speed of the scribes
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The technique of papermaking was introduced in England, in which it was a machine with a cylindrical mold. It starts with a slow movement, and this process was able to produce similar paper in appearance and feel like handmade paper
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Around 600 d.C the paper arrived in Korea and Japan, countries in which it began to be manufactured manually, according to the old tradition; Koreans and Japanese were gradually perfecting this system.
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This problem was solved when Gutenberg invented the printing press, pointing out the moment from which the printing of texts grew exponentially.
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Paper production was first introduced into the Americas, by the Spanish, near Mexico City. Before the arrival of the Spaniards, paper was used as a substance by the Mayans and Aztecs
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The Spaniards founded the first paper production factory in the Americas, in Culhuacan, Mexico
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The Frenchman Ferchault de Reaumur suggested that wood could be used as a source of vegetable fibers for obtaining paper. The slowness in the manufacture of paper was solved at the end of the century, when the first paper production machine appeared, invented by Nicholas Robert and marketed by the Fourdrinier brothers
