Wood-pulp paper
Papel de pulpa de madera
- Date
- 1844 · confidence high
- Place
- Hainichen, Saxony, Germany
- Credited to
- Friedrich Gottlob Keller (mechanical pulp); Charles Fenerty (Nova Scotia, 1844); Benjamin Tilghman (sulphite chemical pulp, 1867)
- People
- 👤 Benjamin Tilghman1785–1850👤 Charles Fenerty1821–1892👤 Friedrich Gottlob Keller1816–1895
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Producing paper pulp by grinding wood with a millstone, instead of using rags, whose scarcity limited production. It made paper cheap enough to be disposable and enabled the high-circulation press.
Keller and Fenerty achieved it independently in the same year; Keller sold the patent to Heinrich Voelter, who industrialised it at Heidenheim.
What it led to
- Cheap newspapers, magazines and novels
- The forestry and paper industries in Scandinavia and Canada
- Deforestation and river pollution
- Degrading acidic paper: a conservation crisis in libraries
Built on
- Fourdrinier continuous paper machine1799-1807
- Fourdrinier papermaking machine
- Réaumur's observations on wasps (1719)
Made possible
- Pulp press
- Pocket book
- Corrugated cardboard