The invention of paper

Until then the Chinese wrote on bamboo strips, heavy and unwieldy, and on silk, too costly for everyday business. The eunuch Cai Lun reports to the court a method of making writing material from tree bark, hemp, rags and fishing nets: the stock is boiled, pounded to a pulp, scooped up on a screen and dried in a thin sheet. Paper is cheap, light and convenient; it drives out the older materials and spreads through the country with the correspondence of the bureaucracy. The craft will take six centuries to travel west — and nearly a thousand years to reach Europe.