Paper
Cai Lun reports a method for making a cheap writing surface from rags and bark.
- When
- Known to
- ± 5 years
- Era
- Classical, Holocene
Paper exists in China before him, but in 105 CE the court official Cai Lun formalises and promotes a process using mulberry bark, hemp, rags and fishing nets, producing a surface far cheaper than silk and lighter than bamboo strips. It reaches the Islamic world after 751 and Europe by the twelfth century. Almost every later expansion of literacy, bureaucracy and printing depends on it being cheap.