Paper (Cai Lun's process)
Papel de fibra vegetal (proceso de Cai Lun)
- Date
- 105 CE · confidence high
- Place
- Luoyang, Henan, China
- Credited to
- Cai Lun, Han court eunuch (perfection and official presentation)
- People
- 👤 Cai Lun48–121
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A sheet formed by filtering, over a mesh screen, a pulp of mulberry bark, rags, hemp and old fishing nets macerated in water. A cheap, lightweight, mass-producible writing support that replaced silk and bamboo strips.
Hemp-paper fragments from Fangmatan and Baqiao (2nd-1st century BCE) predate Cai Lun, who probably perfected and officially presented the process.
What it led to
- Chinese imperial bureaucracy with archives and written examinations
- The spread of Buddhism and Confucianism in massively copied texts
- Woodblock printing and later movable type
- Transmission to Samarkand (751), the Islamic world and Europe: the basis of the printing revolution
Built on
- Beaten bark cloth (tapa)c. 4000 BCE
- Writing brush (maobi)c. 250 BCE
- Bamboo tablets (slips)
- Silk as a writing medium
- Hemp
- Bamboo sieve (screen mould)