Wisconsin School for the Deaf - Tattler Yearbook (Delavan, WI)

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that the invention of the printing press would have been postponed for years if paper had not been available. In very early times people used stone walls, monuments, bones of animals, the smooth bark of trees, pieces of broken pottery, palm leaves, dried animal skins and soft clay as material on which to write. Papyrus was used by the Egyptians who wrote on it with pens of sharpened sticks or reeds and ink mixed from vegetable gum. soot, and water. Papyrus was made by laying thin slices of the stem of the papyrus plant with their edges overlapping across other slices laid at right angles. The whole was moistened with water, pressed down, and the rough places smoothed off with ivory or a smooth shell. The slices were glued together to form a tough white or ivory-colored sheet. Before real paper was invented, the waste left over from the making of silk thread could be washed and flattened into a kind of paste which, when dried and smoothed, was used for a writing surface. After years and years of experiments and improvements, using rags, wood pulp and minerals, smooth sheets of fine paper were made. Until the nineteenth century cotton and linen rags were the materials mostly used to make paper. They were cleaned, soaked, boiled, and reduced to a pulp by beating and grinding. The pulp was spread in thin layers and dried between sheets of felt to form paper. About the beginning of the nineteenth century the modern process of paper-making by machinery was invented. By far the greater part of the world’s output is now made from wood pulp. Linen and cotton rags, Hax waste and sweepings are still used for fine paper. The best tissue papers are made of hemp and rags. Wrapping papers are made of all kinds of fibers, straw, wood pulp, old rope and twine. Newsprint paper in countries where wood is plentiful, is made from wood pulps, rags, straw, etc. Most book papers are now made of wood pulp. While wood pulp remains the cheapest and most readily available material up to the present, probably necessity will drive us to the utilization of other plant fibers in its place. It takes more than five million cords of pulpwood each year to supply the paper needs of our country. In Northern and Central Wisconsin there are many paper-making plants where logs, cut into short lengths, are barked and trimmed. Then they are sliced up into small chips which are put into a huge tank along with a sulphite solution which softens them. Steam is forced in. When the chips have cooked for several hours in the solution, the fibers are separated, and a pulp is formed. After the thick creamy mass has been washed and filtered through screens, it is drawn into large tanks where a solution of bleaching powder makes the pulp white. China clay and coloring matter is added, and all is thoroughly mixed by machinery. The pulp is then spread on an endless copper screen so fine that the water drains off while the fibers remain. The pulp is then passed between rollers which force out any excess moisture, and paper is the result. 24

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Europe. One of Gutenburg’s Bibles is now in the Library of Congress in Washington. The first American press was set up in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the first half of the seventeenth century. These presses were clumsy, slow-moving and expensive. A wine pres had given Gutenburg the idea for making a machine for printing. Another art is wood block printing. Linoleum block printing is quite new. It started with the discovery of linoleum. The introduction of linoleum block printing gave a new idea for decorating things for the home. Some of the more common uses of this type of printing are for greeting cards, book-covers, prints for framing, letter heads, book plates, place cards, book marks and many others. The linoleum used for block printing is known as “battleship linoleum”. It is made in thicknesses up to one fourth of an inch. It is generally a natural brown, but it can be obtained in almost anv other color. The brown is best for cutting. If the surface of the linoleum is not quite smooth, it may be worked down by using a very fine sandpaper. Linoleum cuts, which are to be printed in a power press or a hand jobber, must be type high, which is 918 thousanths of an inch. The better blocks are made from five ply, laminated wood and three-eighths inch linoleum. It is always wise to select a wel-made block when one wants to print any number of copies. The prints should be dried before handling. They should not be placed in piles as the air can not reach the printed surface. When wet prints are piled up, they will lose their original hardness or thinness and become dirty. Good prints should be framed in plain block frames with clear glass, depending on the nature of the subject. Linoleum cuts can also be used in making plaques. When the cut is finished, it is painted with enamel, oil paint or poster paint and finished with shellac. It may be used as a wall plaque. The older boys of the Wisconsin School for the Deaf have done this type of work in the Art department and also in the printing classes. Paper By Royal W. Eklof THOUGH paper was made by the Chinese long before the Christian era, it was not until the eighth century that the art of paper making was brought to Europe. The spread of this new art was slow, and it was not until the fourteenth century that paper became common just in time to be of great use to Gutenburg’s invention, printing. It is very postponed

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This is wound into rolls or cut into sheets as desired. Everywhere we turn we find paper. Our magazines, newspapers and books are made of paper. We wrap our bundles in paper. We use paper tablets or writing paper for writing. Paper labels are universally used. Cans, boxes, pails and other containers are made of paper. The walls of our houses are decorated with wall paper and the roof covered with paper shingles. The sandwiches which we carry to school or to picnics are wrapped in waxed paper to keep them moist and fresh. The uses to which we put paper have been so multiplied that it would be difficult to think of life todav without paper. Paper is the means by which knowledge is spread. Modern science and invention owe their existence largely to the abundant supply of paper. Without cheap and abundant paper to convey our thoughts and desires we would not have the free democratic form of government which makes the United States the most desirable place to live in today. Gutenburg's Home And Surroundings By Yachtman Sue IN the fourteenth century Germany was not a nation, but a number of small states, such as Bavaria. Baden. Macklenberg, Hanover. Each state had a separate ruler. These were petty states, varying in population from less than a thousand people to more than ten thousand and they were ruled by dukes and counts. These states were independent of one another and each ruler had his own little court and courtiers. The ruler was an absolute dictator and collected taxes from his subjects, charged a tariff duty upon all goods crossing his boundaries, and had his standing army—in the small states consisting of only one or two officers anti a handful of privates. Often one monarch quarreled with another about taxes, or something else, and then a war was declared, the two fighting with great vigor. Sometimes many states joined the fray. In every small town there were a few stores and houses far apart from each other and a few trees around every home. The roads were of dirt, but some of them were of cobblestones, and it was only natural that people were easily riled when bothered by the awful noise of cart wheels passing over them. Also near the city there were small farms where people lived, and they had a little livestock of their own. At that time there were no fences and many people had to go to the fields to cut down the grass with their sickles for their livestock. The people had a hard time to manage their stock. Each farm had orchards which raised apples, plums, and so forth. 25