Historical investigations into the origin of the paper mill are complicated by differing definitions and loose terminology from modern authors: Many modern scholars use the term to refer indiscriminately to all kinds of
mills, whether powered by humans,
by animals, or
by water. Their propensity to refer to any ancient paper manufacturing center as a "mill", without further specifying its exact power source, has increased the difficulty of identifying the particularly efficient and historically important water-powered type.
Human and animal-powered mills The use of human and animal-powered mills was known to Muslim and Chinese
papermakers. However, evidence for water-powered paper mills is elusive before the 11th century. The general absence of the use of water-powered paper mills in Muslim papermaking before the 11th century is suggested by the habit of Muslim authors at the time to call a production center not a "mill", but a "paper manufactory". Scholars have identified paper mills in
Abbasid-era
Baghdad in 794–795. The evidence that waterpower was applied to papermaking at this time is a matter of scholarly debate. In the
Moroccan city of
Fez,
Ibn Battuta speaks of "400
mill stones for paper".
Water-powered mills '' of 1493. Due to their noise and smell, papermills were required by medieval law to be erected some distance from the city walls. An exhaustive survey of milling in
Al-Andalus did not uncover water-powered paper mills, nor do the Spanish books of property distribution (
Repartimientos) after the
Christian reconquest refer to any. Arabic texts never use the term mill in connection with papermaking, and the most thorough account of Muslim papermaking at the time, the one by the
Zirid Sultan
Al-Muizz ibn Badis, describes the art purely in terms of a handicraft. This is seen by Leor Halevi as evidence of Samarkand first harnessing waterpower in the production of paper, but notes that it is not known if waterpower was applied to papermaking elsewhere across the Islamic world at the time. Robert I. Burns remains sceptical, given the isolated occurrence of the reference and the prevalence of manual labour in Islamic papermaking elsewhere before the 13th century. Burns, however, has dismissed the case for early Catalan water-powered paper mills, after re-examination of the evidence. The identification of early hydraulic stamping mills in medieval documents from
Fabriano, Italy, is also entirely unsubstantiated. Clear evidence of a water-powered paper mill dates to 1282 in the Iberian
Crown of Aragon. A decree by the Christian king
Peter III addresses the establishment of a royal "
molendinum", a proper hydraulic mill, in the paper manufacturing center of
Xàtiva. though it appears to have been resented by sections of the local Muslim papermakering community; the document guarantees them the right to continue the way of traditional papermaking by beating the pulp manually and grants them the right to be exempted from work in the new mill. From the mid-14th century onwards, European paper milling underwent a rapid improvement of many work processes. The size of a paper mill before the use of industrial machines was measured by counting its vats. Thus, a "one vat" paper mill had only one vatman, one coucher, and other laborers.
15th century The first reference to a paper mill in England was in a book printed by Wynken de Worde ; the mill, near Hertford, belonged to
John Tate.
16th century The first known paper mill in China to use water power during the
Ming dynasty was recorded in 1570.
19th century An early attempt to mechanize the process was patented in 1799 by the Frenchman Nicholas Louis Robert; it was not deemed a success. In 1801, however, the drawings were brought to England by John Gamble and passed on to brothers Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier, who financed the engineer Bryan Donkin to construct the machine. Their first successful machine was installed at
Frogmore Mill in
Hertfordshire in 1803. In 1809, at
Apsley Mill, John Dickinson patented and installed another kind of paper machine. Rather than pouring a dilute pulp suspension onto an endlessly revolving flat wire, this machine used a wire-covered cylinder as the mould. A cylindrical mould is partially submerged in the vat, containing a pulp suspension. Then, as the mould rotates, the water is sucked through the wire, leaving a thin layer of fibers deposited on the cylinder. These cylinder-mold machines, as they were called, were strong competition for Fourdrinier machine makers. They were the type of machine first used by the North American paper industry. It is estimated that by 1850, UK paper production had reached 100,000 tons. Later developments increased the size and capacity of machines and sought high-volume alternative pulp sources from which paper could be reliably produced. Many of the earlier mills were small and had been located in rural areas. The movement was toward larger mills in or near urban areas, closer to their raw material suppliers. They were often situated near a port, where the raw material was brought in by ship, and near paper markets. By the end of the century, there were fewer than 300 UK paper mills, employing 35,000 people and producing 650,000 tons of paper per year.
20th century in
Tervakoski,
Janakkala,
Finland By the early 20th century, paper mills sprang up across
New England and around the world, driven by high demand for paper. The United States, with its infrastructure and
mill towns, was the world's largest producer. Chief among these in paper production was
Holyoke, Massachusetts, which was the largest producer of paper in the world by 1885, and home to engineers
D. H. & A. B. Tower who oversaw the largest firm of paper millwrights in the US during that decade, designing mills on five continents. However, as 20th century progressed this diaspora moved further north and west in the United States, with access to greater pulp supplies and labor. At this time, there were many world leaders of the production of paper; one such was the
Brown Company in
Berlin, New Hampshire run by William Wentworth Brown. During the year 1907, the Brown Company cut between 30 and 40 million acres of woodlands on their property, which extended from
La Tuque,
Quebec, Canada to
West Palm,
Florida. In the 1920s,
Nancy Baker Tompkins represented large paper manufacturers, such as Hammermill Paper Company, Honolulu Paper Company, and Appleton Coated Paper Company, to promote sales to paper product distributors. It was said to be the only business of its kind in the world, and it was founded in 1931 by Tompkins. It prospered despite the business depression. "
Log drives" were conducted on local rivers to send the logs to the mills. By the late 20th and early 21st century, paper mills began to close, and the log drives became a dying craft. Due to the addition of new machinery, many millworkers were laid off, and many of the historic paper mills closed. ==Characteristics==