Forty Centuries of Ink Part 31

The real employment of the water mark may be said to have commenced at the time when it was a custom of the first printers to omit their names from their works. Also, it is to be considered that at this period comparatively few people could either read or write and therefore pictures, designs or other marks were employed to enable them to distinguish the paper of one manufacturer from another. These marks as they became common naturally gave their names to the different sorts of paper.

The earliest known water mark on linen paper represented a picture of a tower and was of the date of 1293. The next known water mark which can be designated is a ram's head and is found in a book of accounts belonging to an official of Bordeaux which was then subject to England. It is dated 1330.

In the fifteenth century there were no distinctions in the quality of paper used for ma.n.u.scripts or for books. In the Mentz Bible of 1462 are to be found no less than three sorts of paper. Of this Bible, the water mark in some sheets is a bull's head simply, and in others a bull's head from whose forehead rises a long line, at the end of which is a cross. In other sheets the water mark is a bunch of grapes.

In 1498 the water mark of paper consisted of an eight pointed star within a double circle. The design of an open hand with a star at the top which was in use as early as 1530, probably gave the name to what is still called hand paper.

It appears that even so high a personage as Henry VIII of England in 1540 utilized the water mark in order to show his contempt for and animosity to Pope Paul III, with whom he had then quarreled, gave orders for the preparation of paper, the water mark of which was a hog with a miter: this he used for his private correspondence.

A little later, about the middle of the sixteenth century, the favorite paper mark was the jug or pot, from which would appear to have originated the term pot paper. Still another belonging to this period was the device of a glove.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the device was a fool's cap and which has continued by name as the particular size which we now designate fool's cap.

The water mark has continued to increase in popularity and to-day may be found in almost any kind of paper, either in the shape of designs, figures, numbers or names.

The circ.u.mstance of the water mark has at various times been the means of detecting frauds, forgeries and impositions in our courts of law and elsewhere.

The following is introduced as a whimsical example of such detections and is said to have occurred in the fifteenth century, and is related by Beloe, London, 1807:

"The monks of a certain monastery at Messina exhibited to a visitor with great triumph, a letter which they claimed had been written in ink by the Virgin Mary with her own hand, not on the ancient papyrus, but on paper made of rags. The visitor to whom it was shown observed with affected solemnity, that the letter involved also a miracle because the paper on which it was written could not have been in existence until over a thousand years after her death."

An interesting example of the use of water marks on paper for fraudulent purposes is to be found in a pamphlet ent.i.tled "Ireland's Confessions." This person, a son of Samuel Ireland, who was a distinguished draughtsman and engraver, about the end of the eighteenth century fabricated a pretended Shakespeare MSS., which as a literary forgery was the most remarkable of its time. Previous to his confessions it had been accepted by the Shakespearean scholars as unquestionably the work of the immortal bard. The following is a citation from his Confessions:

"Being thus urged forward to the production of more ma.n.u.scripts, it became necessary that I should posses; a sufficient quant.i.ty of old paper to enable me to proceed; in consequence of which I applied to a book-seller named Verey, in Great May's buildings, St. Martin's Lane, who, for the sum of five s.h.i.+llings, suffered me to take from all the folio and quarto volumes in his shop the fly leaves which they contained. By this means I was amply stored with that commodity--nor did I fear any mention of the circ.u.mstance by Mr. Verey, whose quiet, unsuspecting disposition, I was well convinced, would never lead him to make the transaction public; in addition to which, he was not likely even to know anything concerning the supposed Shakespearean discovery by myself, and even if he had, I do not imagine that my purchase of the old paper in question would have excited in him the smallest degree of suspicion. As I was fully aware, from the variety of water-marks, which are in existence at the present day, that they must have constantly been altered since the period of Elizabeth and being for some time wholly unacquainted with the water-marks of that age, I very carefully produced my first specimens of the writing on such sheets of old paper as had no marks whatever. Having heard it frequently stated that the appearance of such marks on the papers would have greatly tended to establish their validity, I listened attentively to every remark which was made upon the subject, and from thence I at length gleaned the intelligence that a jug was the prevalent water-mark of the reign of Elizabeth; in consequence of which I inspected all the sheets of old paper then in my possession, and having selected such as had the jug upon them, I produced the succeeding ma.n.u.scripts upon these, being careful, however, to mingle with them a certain number of blank leaves, that the production on a sudden of so many water-marks might not excite suspicion in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of those persons who were most conversant with the ma.n.u.scripts."

Fuller, writing in 1662, characterizes the paper of his day:

"Paper partic.i.p.ates in some sort of the character of the country which makes it; the Venetian being neat, subtle, and court-like; the French light, slight, and slender; and the Dutch thick, corpulent, and gross, sticking up the ink with the sponginess thereof. And he complains of the 'vast sums of money expended in our land for paper out of Italy, France, and Germany, which might be lessened were it made in our nation.' "

Ulman Strother in 1390 started his paper mill at Nuremberg in Bavaria which was the first paper mill known to have been established in Germany, and is said to have been the only one in Europe then manufacturing paper from linen rags.

Among the privy expenses of Henry VII of the year 1498 appears the following entry: "A reward given to the paper mill, 16s. 8d." This is probably the paper mill mentioned by Wynkin de Worde, the father of English typography. It was located at Hertford, and the water mark he employed was a star within a double circle.

The manufacture of paper in England previous to the revolution of 1688 was an industry of very small proportions, most of the paper being imported from Holland.

The first paper mill established in America was by William Rittenhouse who emigrated from Holland and settled in Germantown, Pa., in 1690. At Roxborough, near Philadelphia, on a stream afterwards called Paper Mill run, which empties into the Wissahicken river, was located the site which in company with William Bradford, a printer, he chose for his mill. The paper was made from linen rags, mostly the product of flax raised in the vicinity and made first into wearing apparel.

It was Reaumer, who in 1719 first suggested the possibility of paper being made from wood. He obtained his information on this subject from examination of wasps' nests.

Matthias Koops in 1800 published a work on "Paper" made from straw, wood and other substances.

His second edition appeared in 1801 and was composed of old paper re-made into new. Another work on the subject of "Paper from Straw, &c.,"

by Piette, appeared in 1835, which said work contains more than a hundred pages, each one of which was made from a different kind of material.

Many other valuable works are obtainable which treat of rag paper manufacture and the stories they tell are instructive as well as interesting.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

MODERN INK BACKGROUNDS (WOOD PAPER AND "SAFETY"

PAPER).

SOME GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ABOUT PAPER-MAKING MATERIALS--PROBABILITIES AS TO THE FUTURE OF THE PUBLIC RECORDS--ESTIMATION OF SUCH MATTERS BY THE LATE POPE--INVENTION OF WOOD-PULP PAPER --ITS LASTING QUALITIES--THE THREE KINDS OF SUCH PAPER DEFINED--DISCUSSION OF THE SUBJECT OF FUNGI IN PAPER BY GLYDE--SOME TESTS TO ASCERTAIN THE MATERIAL OF WHICH PAPER IS COMPOSED-- TESTS AS TO SIZING AND THE DETERMINATION OF THE DIRECTION OF THE GRAIN--ABSORBING POWERS OF BLOTTING PAPER--TESTS FOR GROUND WOOD--NEW MODE OF a.n.a.lYSTS--WHEN THE FIRST "SAFETY"

PAPER WAS INVENTED--THE MANY KINDS OF "SAFETY"

PAPER AND PROCESSES IN THEIR MANUFACTURE-- CHRONOLOGICAL REVIEW COVERING THIS SUBJECT-- SURVEY OF THE VARIOUS PROCESSES IN THE TREATMENT AND USE OF "SAFETY" PAPER--ONLY THREE CHEMICAL "SAFETY" PAPERS NOW ON THE MARKET-- WHY IT IS POSSIBLE TO RAISE SOME MONETARY INSTRUMENTS.

PAPER manufacturers have tried all the pulp-making substances. This statement to the unlearned must seem curious, because in the very early times they were content with a single material and that did not even require to be first made into the form of pulp.

When the supply of papyrus failed, it was rags which they subst.i.tuted. By the simplest processes they produced a paper with which our best cannot compare.

In some countries great care is exercised in selecting the quality of paper for official use, in others none at all.

What will be the state of our archives a few hundred years hence, if they be not continually recopied?

Some of the printed paper rots even more quickly than written.

The late Pope at one time invited many of the savants, chemists and librarians of Europe, to meet at Einsiedlen Abbey in Switzerland. He requested that the subject of their discussions should be both ink and paper. He volunteered the information, already known to the initiated, that the records of this generation in his custody and under his control were fast disappearing and unless the writing materials were much improved he estimated that they would entirely disappear. It is stated that at this meeting the Pope's representative submitted a number of doc.u.ments from the Vatican archives which are scarcely decipherable though dated in the nineteenth century. In a few of those of dates later than 1873 the paper was so tender that unless handled with exceptional care, it would break in pieces like scorched paper.

These conditions are in line with many of those which prevail with few exceptions in every country, town or hamlet.

A contributory cause as we know is a cla.s.s of poor and cheap inks now in almost universal use. The other is the so-called "modern" or wood-pulp paper in general vogue.

Reaumur, as already stated, back in 1719 suggested from information gathered in examinations of wasps'

nests, that a paper might be manufactured from wood. This idea does not appear to have been acted upon until many years later, although in the interim inventors were exhausting their ingenuity in the selection of fibrous materials from which paper might be manufactured.

The successful introduction of wood as a subst.i.tute for or with rags in paper manufacture until about 1870 was of slow growth; since which time vast quant.i.ties have been employed. In this country alone millions of tons of raw material are being imported to say nothing of home products.

Its value in the cause of progress of some arts which contribute greatly to our comfort and civilization cannot be overestimated, but nevertheless the wood paper is bound to disintegrate and decay, and the time not very far distant either. Hence, its use for records of any kind is always to be condemned.

There are three cla.s.ses of wood pulp; mechanical wood, soda process, and the sulphite. The first or mechanical wood is a German invention of 1844, where the logs after being cut up into proper blocks, were then ground against a moving millstone against which they were pressed and with the aid of flowing water reduced to a pulpy form. This pulp was transported into suitable tanks and then pumped to the "beaters."

The soda process wood and sulphite wood pulp are both made by chemical processes. The first was invented by Meliner in 1865. The preparation of pulp by this process consists briefly in first cutting up the logs into suitable sections and throwing them into a chipping machine. The chips are then introduced into tanks containing a strong solution of caustic soda and boiled under pressure.

The sulphite process is substantially the same except that the chips are thrown into what are called digesters and fed with the chemicals which form an acid sulphite. The real inventor of this latter process is not known.

The chemicals employed in both of these processes compel a separation of the resinous matters from the cell tissues or cellulose. These products are then treated in the manufacturing of paper with few variations, the same as the ordinary rag pulp.

These now perfected processes are the results of long and continuing experimentations made by many inventors.

The following paper was read before the London Society of Arts by Mr. Alfred Glyde, in May, 1850, and is equally applicable to some of the wood paper of the present day:

"Owing to the imperfections formerly existing in the microscope, little was known of the real nature of the plants called fungi until within the last few years, but since the improvements in that instrument the subject of the development, growth, and offices of the fungi has received much attention.

They compose, with the algae and lichens, the cla.s.s of thallogens (Lindley), the algae existing in water, the other two in air only. A fungus is a cellular flowerless plant, fructifying solely by spores, by which it is propagated, and the methods of attachment of which are singularly various and beautiful. The fungi differs from the lichens and algae in deriving their nourishment from the substances on which they grow, instead of from the media in which they live. They contain a larger quant.i.ty of nitrogen in their const.i.tution than vegetables generally do, and the substance called 'fungine'

has a near resemblance to animal matter.

Their spores are inconceivably numerous and minute, and are diffused very widely, developing themselves wherever they find organic matter in a fit state. The princ.i.p.al conditions required for their growth are moisture, heat, and the presence of oxygen and electricity. No decomposition or development of fungi takes place in dry organic matter, a fact ill.u.s.trated by the high state of preservation in which timber has been found after the lapse of centuries, as well as by the condition of mummy-cases, bandages, etc., kept dry in the hot climate of Egypt. Decay will not take place in a temperature below that of the freezing point of water, nor without oxygen, by excluding which, is contained in the air, meat and vegetables may be kept fresh and sweet for many years.

"The action which takes place when moist vegetable substances are exposed to oxygen is that of slow combustion ('eremacausis'), the oxygen uniting with the wood and liberating a volume of carbonic acid equal to itself, and another portion combining with the hydrogen of the wood to form water. Decomposition takes place on contact with a body already undergoing the same change, in the same manner that yeast causes fermentation. Animal matter enters into combination with oxygen in precisely the same way as vegetable matter, but as, in addition to carbon and hydrogen, it contains nitrogen, the products of the eremacausis are more numerous, being carbon and nitrate of ammonia, carburetted and sulphuretted hydrogen, and water, and these ammoniacal salts greatly favor the growth of fungi. Now paper consists essentially of woody fibre, having animal matter as size on its surface.

The first microscopic symptom of decay in paper is irregularity of surface, with a slight change of color, indicating the commencement of the process just noticed, during which, in addition to carbonic acid, certain organic acids are formed, as crenic and ulmic acids, which, if the paper has been stained by a coloring matter, will form spots of red on the surface. The same process of decay goes on in parchment as in paper, only with more rapidity, from the presence of nitrogen in its composition.

When this decay has begun to take place, fungi are produced, the most common species being Penicilium glauc.u.m. They insinuate themselves between the fibre, causing a freer admission of air, and consequently hasten the decay. The substances most successfully used as preventives of decay are the salts of mercury, copper, and zinc. b.i.+.c.hloride of mercury (corrosive sublimate) is the material employed in the kyanization of timber, the probable mode of action being its combination with the alb.u.men of the wood, to form an insoluble compound not susceptible of spontaneous decomposition, and therefore incapable of exciting fermentation. The antiseptic power of corrosive sublimate may be easily tested by mixing a little of it with flour paste, the decay of which, and the appearance of fungi, are quite prevented by it. Next to corrosive sublimate in antiseptic value stand the salts of copper and zinc. For use in the preservation of paper the sulphate of zinc is better than the chloride, which is to a certain extent delinquescent."

There are numerous paper tests which include the matter of sizing, direction of the grain, absorbing powers, character of ingredients, etc. A few of them are cited.