T H E R O B E R T C W I L L I A M S A M E R I C A N M U S E U M O F P A P E R M A K I N G
Robert C. Williams
American Museum of
Papermaking
Teachers’ Guide
Your Guide to the Science,
History, Art and Technology
of Papermaking
www.ipst.gatech.edu/amp
© Robert C. Williams American Museum of Papermaking
Georgia Institute of Technology
Institute of Paper Science and Technology
500 Tenth Street, NW
Atlanta, GA 30332-0620
www.ipst.gatech.edu/amp
This life-size statue, which stands in the center of the
American Museum of Papermaking, is an adaptation of an
illustration entitled "The Papermaker," which is believed to have
first appeared in 1698 in the Book of Trades by Christopher Weigel.
table of contents
Introduction: Robert C. Williams American Museum
of Papermaking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I
Part 1 - The History and Social Studies of Papermaking Around the World . . . 1
Now That You Have Read the History of Papermaking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Lesson 1: Paper Artifact Box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
QCC’s for Lesson 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Lesson 2: The Technology of Paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
QCC’s for Lesson 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Lesson 3: The Properties of Paper Part I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
QCC’s for Lesson 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Lesson 4: The Properties of Paper Part II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

institution and educational resource
serving Georgia since 1993. A small staff
manages this unique museum and its
collection that melds art, history,
technology and industry from a historical,
global perspective. The collection is made
up of over 25,000 artifacts including
manuscripts, rare books, prints, hand and
industrial tools, and crafted and
manufactured objects as well as paper
samples. Our outreach programming -
exhibits, lectures, workshops, tours and
other programming - has been very
successful and continues to establish
larger and more diverse audiences for the
museum. The Museum draws its
membership and visitors from local
regional, national and international
communities.
The Robert C. Williams American
Museum of Papermaking's mission is to:
Collect, preserve, increase, and
disseminate knowledge about
papermaking - past, present and future.
Research
We are pleased to offer a new service to
the public through our extensive archives.
We can provide professional research
services for most aspects of paper history
and technology. We have many amazing

give us notice a $25 cancellation fee will be
charged. Payment is due at time of arrival.
Our address is:
500 Tenth Street NE,
Atlanta Georgia 30332-0620
Hours: Monday-Friday 9-5
Directions
From the Airport or I-85/I-75 Northbound,
take I-75/I-85 North to Exit 250 (Williams
Street/10th Street). Turn left at exit light on
10th Street, go about 3/4 of a mile. Just after
you cross Hemphill Avenue, the parking
entrance for the museum and IPST’s main
location will be on your left. The building is
located at the corner of 10th Street and
Hemphill Avenue.
From I-85/I-75 Southbound, take
I-75/I-85 south to Exit 250 (Techwood
Drive/14th Street/10th Street). Continue
on Techwood Drive until you reach 10th
Street. (You will cross over 14th Street
before you reach 10th Street.) Turn right
at exit light on 10th Street, go about 3/4
of a mile. Just after you cross Hemphill
Avenue, the parking entrance for the
museum and IPST’s main location will
be on your left. The building is located
at the corner of 10th Street and
Hemphill Avenue.
Visit our Web site at: www.ipst.edu/amp

fibers over the years, is that paper is made with water and
pre-paper has been pounded together to form the sheet.
Early Papermaking
The earliest known paper has been traced back to 200
BC in China. The paper was a prayer embedded into
the adobe brick of a home, presumably to bless the home. Most early paper was used
either for religious purposes, by the reigning government or the very wealthy for business
transactions.
The first papers were made from recycled fishing nets, bamboo, mulberry bark or
hemp. The papermaker would harvest the fibers and place them in water to soak for
Early Chinese papermaking
Papyrus sheet
2
The History and Social Studies of Papermaking Around the World
T H E R O B E R T C W I L L I A M S A M E R I C A N M U S E U M O F P A P E R M A K I N G
prolonged periods of time, sometimes 2 to 3 days. They would dig large pits and line
them with stones or would use wooden vats for soaking the fibers. The fibers would then
be stripped of their outer bark and the stalks would be re-soaked. The process would be
repeated until most or all of the outer bark was gone, depending upon the quality of the
paper they wanted. For instance writing paper would be soaked for longer periods of time
than Chinese Ceremonial money which was used for burning to the spirits at funerals.
The papermaker would then pound the fibers into pulp. It is generally believed that the
early papermakers would use wooden tools or rocks to pound the pulp. The papermolds
were made in a rectangular frame shape from bamboo and the interior portion was a
loosely woven material. The molds are known as wove molds because the paper takes on
the texture of the fiber. The papermaker would pour a scoop of pulp on top of the mold
and spread it out evenly using their hands to shake the mold. The molds with the wet
paper were placed in the sunshine to dry. An average papermaker would probably have
owned 25 to 30 molds. The pouring process would be repeated as the paper on the molds
dried so they could be reused.

family industry. The early paper was made in a fashion
similar to the Korean paper, however the Japanese
papermakers developed it into a finer art.
Some of the paper was so thin and smooth that
it was almost transparent and felt like silk. This was a
far cry from the rough first Chinese paper that
probably contained bits of unbeaten bark.
Papermaking traveled to the West on a journey
very similar to the Silk Trade Road. It was not an easy
journey and involved slavery, espionage and wars. From
Japan papermaking traveled to Tibet, across the top of
Africa and to India.
Papermaking Travels to Europe
Papermaking arrived in Europe in 1290 AD in Italy at the Fabriano
Mills, a little less than 1500 years after its invention in China. The
Europeans used cotton and linen as their fiber of choice, mostly
from recycled clothing. Rag pickers would buy people’s old
clothing and sell it to the mills. At the mills the rag pickers would
sort the clothing as to color, grade and condition. Buttons and
hooks would be removed and the rags would be washed to remove
all dirt. They used a rag knife to cut the rags into strips, wet them
and rolled them up into balls. The rags would then ferment for a
few weeks.
Boiling fibers for Japanese papermaking
Rag pickers
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T H E R O B E R T C W I L L I A M S A M E R I C A N M U S E U M O F P A P E R M A K I N G
The papermakers would waste a lot of rags using this method because about 1/3rd
of the rags would ferment too much and become rotten. However, the other 2/3rds would

The First Settlers
Papermaking has played an important economic and social role in the history of the
United States, from the Rittenhouse Mill in 1690 to the modern technology of today.
Printers were the first to voice the need for papermaking in the Colonies. Supplies from
Europe were available on an erratic and limited basis. At that time, in the late 1600s,
William Penn was recruiting tradesmen in Europe to
colonize his land in Pennsylvania. He sent flyers throughout
Europe telling of religious freedom and economic
prosperity. On one of his journeys to Holland he met
William Rittenhouse, a papermaker, who was selling paper
in Amsterdam. Rittenhouse was interested in the religious
freedom promised and influenced by Penn decided to
immigrate to North America.
William Rittenhouse and his family established the
first colonial papermill in Germantown, Pennsylvania, an
area slightly north of Philadelphia. Germantown was
attractive to the family for a variety of reasons including
serving as a potential source of rags for papermaking. The local blacksmith helped to
build the heavy equipment necessary for a mill and there was a tannery where they
obtained materials to make sizing. The location had the additional benefit of being
downstream from a group of weavers and Rittenhouse obtained scraps of cotton and
linen from the weavings for fibre.
The first papermill was built from logs, over the Wissahickan Creek. There are
large boulders on the creek banks, which served as platforms to secure the mill.
Rittenhouse chose the location because the water was clean and free of heavy mineral
deposits.
Rittenhouse and his family continued the European tradition of papermaking.
The majority of the fibers for pulp were rags from clothing and blankets. William’s wife
Geertruid and daughter Elizabeth probably washed the rags, separated the cotton from
the linen, and removed the bad spots and fasteners. Rags were sliced using a rag cutter; a

If the paper were for stationary or fine printing it was sized. Sizing was made from
bits of skin and bone left over from the tannery, which were boiled into a gelatin
mixture. Wooden tongs were used to dip the dried paper into the gelatin and then the
paper would be re-hung in the drying loft. The sized paper was then hand polished by
rubbing stones on the paper and stacked for the market. The three men working at the
Rittenhouse Mill made about 4 reams of newspaper in a day. Their annual production
would have been 1,200 to 1,500 reams of paper.
Between the years 1639 and 1728 there were 37 printers in business (23 in Boston,
9 in Philadelphia and 2 in New York). They had printed over 3,067 books, pamphlets and
broadsides. There were also now 6 newspapers.
7
Although the need was growing for papermills to start one required not only land
and money but also a willingness to go through a lot of red tape. A papermaker needed
about $10,000 to start up and employed between 15 and 20 people. The bureaucracy
came from two sources, the colonial and the European governments. The British in
particular thought of the United States as their paper market. In 1728 the English
Parliament investigated the Colonial papermills to see if they were infringing on their
business but could only find two mills, one in Massachusetts and the other in Maine.
Even though the English could not export enough paper to meet the demand of the
Colonial market, there was a growing paranoia about competition.
In 1765 the Stamp Act was issued from England imposing a tax on every sheet
of paper used for writing or printing. The idea was not to allow the Colonial
paper to flood the market to the detriment of the English paper. However,
collecting the tax was hard and brought in less revenue than it cost to enforce.
Papermaking was starting to spread around the colonies. The first
Southern papermill was established in North Carolina by a group of German
Morovians in 1767. The Colonial Congress met in Hillsborough North
Carolina in September 1775. The Congress offered 250 pounds to the first
person to establish a mill. Their condition was that the papermaker had to
produce within the first two years 30 reams of brown paper, 30 reams of

be detained from proceeding with the associators (a volunteer militia) to New Jersey’and
the Committee of Safety followed suit shortly after, on August 9”.
3
After the Revolutionary War papermills started to proliferate and according to
Jacques Pierre Brissot de Warville in 1794 he knew of 48 papermills in Pennsylvania and
15 in Delaware. John Maxson estimates that there were approximately 100 to 125 total in
the United States.
In 1799, 22 year old Zenas Crane left Springfield Massachusetts to find a location
for his papermill. Zenas had grown up in a papermaking family. His father was a partner
in the Vose, Lewis and Crane Papermill in Milton Massachusetts, near Boston. He
apprenticed at 16 with his brother who owned another papermill.
Crane’s number one priority was to find a clear source of water with no
contaminants and enough force to run the stamping wheel. He also needed to be
relatively close to potential customers. Crane settled on Dalton Massachusetts on the
Housatonic River with its clear water and a location near 2 newspapers - The Sun in
Pittsfield and the Western Star in Stockbridge. It took him two years to find partners with
the necessary funds to establish a mill. Interestingly, the mill was built on the land before
the land was purchased from Martin Chamberlain for $194 on December 25, 1801.
The Crane Papermill had one vat that could produce 20 posts with 125 sheets in a
post. Crane hired “an engineer at three dollars a week, a vatman and a coucher at three
and a half each, without board; one additional workman and two girls at 75 cents a week
each, and a lay-boy at 60 cents, all being boarded.”
4
3
Maxson, John W., “Papermaking in America: from Art to Industry”,“The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress”, April 1968, page 121.
4
Wheelwright, William Bond “Zenas Crane, Pioneer Papermaker”, “The Paper Maker”, Vol. 20, No. 1, 1951, pg. 4.
9
There is no record of what Crane received at the time as mill manager but several years
later he was up to $9.00 per week.

5
Artifact from the collection of the Crane Paper Museum.
The History and Social Studies of Papermaking Around the World
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The Machine Begins
The first papermachine was imported in 1817 for a mill in Brandywine Creek, Delaware.
The machine would change the speed, and output of papermaking forever. Papermakers
considered the paper machine a tool, as was the paper mold, and many of the same
families adapted to the new style of production. By the mid to late 1800s the mills which
had not changed to the machine could not compete in the market place and hand
papermaking slowly died.
Thomas Gilpin, a papermaker, studied with the papermakers and paper machine
inventors in Europe and had made drawings and extensive notes describing their
inventions. He modified the Dickinson Cylinder machine design slightly and procured a
US patent for the Gilpin machine. The Gilpin brothers are credited with the invention of
the first American paper machine.
Growing Pains
The Civil War caused the next shortage of paper in the United States. The majority of
papermills were located in the northern states. The south’s economy was mostly
agricultural and they imported their paper from Europe and the northern states. When
the Civil War started the South was cut off from their paper suppliers. Papermills became
targets for both sides in order to handicap communication. Marietta Georgia had the
largest mill in the South, running 24 hours a day to make paper before the mill was
destroyed in the war. There was also a shortage of rags to make paper and experiments
started in the South to make pulp from the cotton plant. The resulting paper did not
possess the necessary strength needed for writing paper.
11
The northern states were also suffering from lack of rags. The Franklin Paper Mill
in Connecticut held a government contract for making wrappers for cotton batting. The

replaced by wood shortly after.
6
Elliott, page 47
7
Donnelly, Florence,“The Beautiful Mill”,“The Paper Maker”, Vol. 20, No. 1, 1951, pg. 29
The History and Social Studies of Papermaking Around the World
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T H E R O B E R T C W I L L I A M S A M E R I C A N M U S E U M O F P A P E R M A K I N G
In 1878 Remington, from the Remington
Paper Company of Watertown New York,
bought the Lick Mill. He also enjoyed
experimenting with fibers and was the first to
import the sulfur process to produce pulp from
wood fibers. California was badly in need of
paper mills since the East Coast mills
considered them too far away to export paper
profitably.
The beautiful mahogany Lick Mill burned down in 1882 but was soon replaced by
a new mill 175 feet wide. The new mill had its own blacksmith shop, machine shop and
storehouse. The single mill workers lived in a two-story dorm and the married workers in
mill houses. They had 40 men working in the mill both day and night.
The mill prospered selling newsprint for $160 per ton wholesale. The fibers used
were cloth, wood (poplar, spruce, and hemlock), burlap or jute, chemical fibers, hemp,
and straw (although this was being phased out). Their newest and eventually largest
products were paper to wrap fruit in for shipping and druggists wrapping paper.
With papermaking becoming a larger industry in America, research and education
became more important. Wood was the most popular fiber, triggering a new look at
forestry practices. In 1895 Dr. Carl Alvin Schenck founded the first forestry school in the
United States at the Biltmore Estates in North Carolina, home of the Vanderbilt family. In
Europe forestry schools were wide spread and the students studied science and

books on his adventures.
Although science and technology changed the tools used for papermaking in a
little over 300 years, certain elements have remained the same – the family ownership, the
search for less expensive fibers, and continuos change to keep up with the market. The
industry, until very recently, has remained a family industry. The mills were owned by
generations of the same family, including some of the first mills such as The Crane Paper
Company. The mill workers are often from generations of families from the same
geographic areas.
Many business analysts predicted the end of paper when the computer technology
became so embedded in our lives. The opposite has proved true with people using much
more paper to print out all of the e-mails and faxes of today. The paper companies are
always searching for new ways to reach their customers, whether they are the companies
making filters or walls from paper or the customer purchasing stationary.
As George Bernard Shaw said “Let those who may complain that it was all on
paper remember that only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth,
knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.”
The History and Social Studies of Papermaking Around the World
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15
Bibliography
Allen, George, “The Rittenhouse Paper Mill and Its
Founder”, “The Mennonite Quarterly Review”, April 1942
Calder, Ritchie, “The Evolution of the Machine”, New York:
American Heritage Publishing, 1968
Clapperton, R.H., “Paper, An Historical Account of Its
Making by Hand from the Earliest Times Down to the
Present Day”, Oxford: Printed at the Shakespeare
Head Press, 1934
Clapperton, R.H., “The Papermaking Machine, Its Invention,

to Pennsylvania”, Swathmore: Swathmore College
Monographs on Quaker History, 1935
Hunter, Dard, “Papermaking in Pioneer America”,
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1952
Hunter, Dard, “Papermaking The History and Technique of
an Ancient Craft”, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947
Kephart, Calvin, “Rittenhouse Genealogy Debunked”,
“National Genealogical Society Quarterly”, vol. XXVI, No. 4,
December 1938
Kriebel, H.W., “The Penn Germania”, Vol. I, Cleona:
Holzapel Publishing Company, 1912
Maxson, John W., “Papermaking in America: from Art to
Industry”, “The Quarterly Journal of the Library of
Congress”, April 1968, pgs. 116 - 133
McGraw, Judith, “Most Wonderful Machine”, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1987
Pennypacker, Honorable SW, “The Settlement of
Germantown and the Beginning of German Emigration to
the New World”, Philadelphia: W.J. Campbell, 1899
Pierce, Wadsworth, “The First 175 Years of Crane
Papermaking”, North Adams: Excelsior Press, 1977
Now that you have read the History of Papermaking, here are a few
lesson ideas….
Discuss with your class what they think is the most important event in papermaking
history. Take a sampling of the answers and see how they might fit together. Now ask
your students if they have ever seen a timeline. Ask them what timelines show and why
they are useful. Suggest they make a timeline as a class or individually tracing the history
of paper from pre-historic times to the present. A collection of important dates will
follow this section.
Another way to get students involved in the history of papermaking and to

“Do you know what an artifact is? Tell me.” (Request definitions)
“This box is full of artifacts, but the description page has been lost. However, we only
have this box for a few days, and I want to make the best of it. You have all proven
yourselves to be wonderful at deductions: figuring out what things are or what they mean
or what happened based on clues and bits of information. We need to use these skills
today.”
“I know that everything in this box has to do with the history of papermaking, starting in
ancient China to the present in America. Other than that, I don’t know what these things
are or what they were used for. But you do because today you are archeologists and
historians. You will need your expert powers of deduction!”
“Each person will work with a partner. You will need a paper and pencil; one person will
be the scribe. You will receive/ select (teacher’s choice) one of the artifacts from this box
and set to work to deduce the following:
17
materials needed:
1 artifact box provided by the Robert C. Williams
International Museum of Papermaking
2 paper and writing utensils for group
brainstorming
More Fun with the History of Paper
Lesson
1
What you think the item is.
What it was used for.
Who used the item.
How it was used (be prepared to demonstrate).
Why this item was important to the culture/ time.
“You will have 20 minutes to discuss the artifact and write down your ‘findings.’Then we
will gather together and one of you will present your findings to the group.”
Time to Explore!

inspired the inventor to create it.
5. Write an advertisement for this item that would entice people from its time period to
buy it and use it.
19
QCCs for Lessons 1
Social Studies
5th grade: 4,9,10,11
6th grade:
3,4,5,6,7,8,10,11,13,14,19,
20,21,23,24,25,26,28,28,
39,40,42
Science
5th grade: 1,2,4
6th grade: 1,4
7th grade: 1,2
Art
5th grade: 17,19
6th grade: 17,18
7th grade: 3,20
Taking a Closer Look at Paper
Its time to take a closer look at paper now. You now have some samples of different kinds
of paper. You will take these samples and look at them with a microscope. Do they look
different when they are wet from when they are dry? What do you think paper is made
of? Now you are set to explore these questions!
Instructions for Students:
1.Put each sample in a compartment in
your paper tray Tear off a corner of the
first sample of paper.
2. Rub the torn edge of the first sample
between your thumb and finger several

construction paper
1 roll of transparent tape
20
The Technology of Paper
Lesson
2
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