How was paper invented?
Forest Rearranged
How was paper invented?
Long before screens, before printers, before notebooks — people needed something to write on. Stone tablets were too heavy to carry around. Animal skins worked, but took forever to prepare. Silk was beautiful but wildly expensive. And then, about 2,000 years ago in China, someone had a brilliant idea involving a pile of old rags and a tub of water.
His name was Cai Lun, and he worked in the Han Dynasty court around the year 105. He noticed something interesting: when old fishing nets and rags sat in water for a long time, they broke down into tiny fibers — like threads so small you could barely see them. What if you could catch those fibers and press them into something new?
