Paper

Of all the writing materials mankind has employed down through the ages, paper has become the most widely used around the world.  Paper is one of the most important thing which people use in their daily life. Everything like our copy, book, newspaper, magazine etc, are made out of paper. But do you how was paper invented? You may have heard about the making of paper form the Papyrus Reed by the Egyptians in the 1st century BC. Lets us go more deep about this invention.
                                   The word ‘paper' is derived from papyrus, a plant that was once abundant in Egypt and which was used to produce a thick, paper-like material by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. Papyrus, however, is only one of the predecessors of paper that are collectively known by the generic term ‘tapa' and which were mostly made from the inner bark of the paper mulberry, fig and daphne trees.

Clay tablets

                                 Since the invention of writing people have tried their hands on almost everything to write on. For example clay tablets, leaves, bark of tree etc. They came up with something which was easier to write like the Papyrus Reed or Parchment. 
                                 

Ts'ai Lun

                                In 105 AD, under the Han Dynasty emperor Ho-Ti, a government official in China named Ts'ai Lun was the first to start a paper-making industry. Ts'ai Lun seems to have made his paper by mixing finely chopped mulberry bark and hemp rags with water, mashing it flat, and then pressing out the water and letting it dry in the sun. He may have based his idea on bark cloth, which was very common in China and also made from mulberry bark. Ts'ai Lun's paper was a big success, and began to be used all over China .   

Ancient Paper Industry

                                It wasn't until the 3rd century that the secret art of papermaking began to creep out of China, first to Vietnam and then Tibet. It was introduced in Korea in the 4th century and spread to Japan in 6th. There, during the 8th century, the Empress Shotuka undertook a massive project consisting of printing a million prayers - dharani - on individual sheets of paper, with each mounted in its own pagoda. With such a profound inception, it is not surprising that the fine art of paper-making has continued in Japan to this day, garnering deep appreciation and ever increasing sophistication.

                               In Europe, the use of papyrus had dropped out in the 9th century. The preferred medium for the artists and literati of the time was the smooth and lustrous parchment. However, parchment - made from animal skin - was extremely expensive. In fact, it has been estimated that a single bible hand written on parchment required the skins of 300 sheep. The notion of paper being used as a practical everyday item did not occur until the 15th Century.                                                                                                                                                                      Papermaking and manufacturing in Europe was spread by Muslims living on the  Iberian Peninsula and Sicily in the  10th  century, and then it slowly spread to Italy and Southern France reaching Germany by 1100. Earlier, other  paper  like materials were in use including papyrus, 

parchment, palm leaves and vellum, but all of these were derived from raw materials which were expensive or in limited supply, or required extensive hand-processing to produce a satisfactory finish. Paper, being made from wood or rags, could be produced anywhere, and once large scale production techniques had been developed it could be manufactured in almost any quantity at moderate cost.    

Johannes Gutenberg

                           Starting in the 1200s, though, the Christians conquered Islamic Spain, and as they took over Spain they also learned how to make paper. By 1250 AD, the Italians had learned to make good paper and sold it all over Europe. In 1338, French monks began to make their own paper. By 1411 - nearly a millennium and a half after it was invented - people in Germany began to produce their own rag paper. Once they had learned to make paper, they became more interested in also learning about Chinese printing, and a man called Gutenberg produced the first printed Bible in 1453. 
                                  Thus the printing press marked the end of the Introduction of paper in the world.