The human civilization has always been in the urge to find a medium which can enable them to communicate their ideas in the written expression. The people in Stone Age used to draw pictures with the small pebbles on the caves. The changing civilization continued to find alternative ways to make the medium of written expression in a good format. A time came, when pieces of leathers, leaves, wood, stone, metals, silk, bamboos etc were being used as surfaces to write their expressions. However the credit for inventing the original paper goes to Chinese man Tsai Lun. Afterwards this idea and process for paper making transferred to the other countries as a result of which paper is considered as a medium for expressing written communication in the world today.
The oldest writing surfaces in existence include Babylonian clay tablets and Indian palm leaves. Around 3000 b.c. The Egyptians developed a writing material using papyrus, the plant for which paper is named. Early in the Holy Roman Empire, the long manuscript scrolls that were made of fragile papyrus and used by Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans were replaced by the codex, separate pages bound together at one side and having a cover (like the modern book). Eventually, papyrus was replaced by vellum (made of a fine-grain lambskin, kidskin, or calfskin) and parchment (made of sheepskin or goatskin), both of which provided superior surfaces for painting. The wood-derived paper we know today was developed in a.d. 105 by the Chinese, who devised a way to make tree bark, hemp, rags, and fishnets into paper. The process used then contained the basic elements that are still found in paper mills today. The Moors introduced paper making to Europe (Spain) in about 1150; by the 1400s paper was being made throughout Europe. But it was not until the late 1700s that paper was produced in continuous rolls. In 1798 a French paper mill clerk invented a machine that could produce a continuous sheet of paper in any desired size from wood pulp. The machine was improved and patented by English paper makers Henry (1766-1854) and Sealy Forerunner (d. 1847) in 1807. The invention spurred the development of newspapers.
