Paper

The growing availability of paper made possible the dramatic expansion in knowledge facilitated in particular by the increasing popularity of the printing press in the 16th century.

The printing press was, by any measure, crucial for increasing the amount of information available in the early modern world, first in China and later in Europe. But the press was not the only technology needed for this explosion in knowledge, and its significance can be exaggerated. After all, information had long circulated in the stories told from one person to another, as well as in manuscript treatises, typically written on parchment or vellum before 1500. Norse sagas, for example, circulated long before paper was easily available in their North Atlantic communities.

Print could not have achieved the economies of scale that printers found profitable if they had only limited access to paper. It is thus not surprising that along with the press the technology for creating paper became more efficient to keep up with the increased demand. In the 16th century, paper was produced by bleaching and pulping used clothing, turning it into rags. Over time, paper makers realized that they could make even more paper (and greater profit) if they mixed other physical elements into the paper. To the present day, the quality of paper is known by its “rag content,” a holdover in terminology from the age in which paper came only from rags. Moveable type, the creation of Johann Gensfleisch zuM Gutenberg, was crucial, but it could only work if there was an ample supply of paper (and ink).

The greatest advances in the production of paper took place in the 19th century, when Europeans found ways to make paper out of pulp from trees. But even without that technological advance, printers were able to get enough paper to produce their ever-expanding number of books. By 1500, or less than 40 years after Gutenberg’s death in 1468, printing presses had become common in Europe. Fourteen European cities had presses by 1470, and they spread to over 100 cities by 1480. By the beginning of the 16th century, according to one estimate, 200 cities had printing operations, which together produced 35,000 distinct impressions of books or approximately 12 million books in all. Printers published all of these books on pulped rags, which has meant that many books from the first age of print are in better shape in the 20th century than books filled with paper from wood pulp. Paper from the 19th century often cracks or crumbles when a user turns the pages. Books from the era of Gutenberg through the 17th century, by contrast, if handled with care suffer no damage when used.

Further reading: Andre Blum, On the Origin of Paper, trans. Harry M. Lydenberg (New York: R. R. Bowker, 1934); Warren Chappell, A Short History of the Printed Word (New York: Arno, 1980); Dard Hunter, The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1947); Harold Love, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); David McKitterick, Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 1450-1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).