Biography of Tsai Lunya

Tsai Lun was born in the city of Layan of the current district of Henyan of the province of Hunan. In 75, the eunuch entered the imperial palace. And after 30 years, by then, having become the personal secretary of the Emperor Ha Di Liu Zhao, made his discovery. Before him, paper in China was made of hemp, and even earlier from silk. She was either rude or expensive.

Tsai Lun was grinding the fiber of mulberries, wood ash, rags and hemp. He mixed all this with water and laid the resulting mass to the shape of a wooden frame and a sieve from bamboo. After drying in the sun, he smoothed this mass with the help of stones. As a result, strong sheets of paper were obtained. The history of the country ”Rhine Krueger, - the basis of this invention was the ancient Chinese tradition of soaking mats in water so that their surface became softer.” The emperor praised the opening of his secretary.

Tsai Lunya was granted a high title of minister. It is interesting how Rain Krueger noted that at first “paper was used not for writing, but for decoration and in the visual arts, as well as during ceremonies and holidays, for credit operations in trade, for hygiene and medical purposes, for the manufacture of clothing and furniture, for games, etc. Quickly enough paper became available in countries surrounding the Middle Kingdom, primarily in Korea, Japan and Indochina, where the elite began to use it in ...

restrooms. By the way, “civilized” Europeans began to use paper for this purpose only at the beginning of the 19th century, before that its role was played in the summer, straw in winter, and most often simply ... hands and water. They learned this from the "non -cylidized" Asians. After the invention of Tsai Lunia, the process of paper production began to improve quickly. The paper has become available not only to the elite.

Unfortunately, the invention of technology for creating paper also had negative consequences, both for the inventor and the history of China. The glory of the creator of the paper was not helped by the king Luna in the palace horseman struggle under the new emperor An Dee. The famous eunuch had to commit suicide by accepting the poison. Historian Charles Patrick Fitzgerald in the fundamental work “China History” noted that “the invention of paper in China at such an early stage was rather a misfortune, since the seal appeared only eight hundred years later and did not become widespread to the X - XI centuries.” The loss of samples of ancient literature as a result of the destruction of books in the era of Qin acquired a gigantic scale precisely due to the fact that paper is too fragile material.

” In the VIII century, the Arabs, who defeated the Chinese in one of the battles, adopted the secrets of paper production from prisoners. In Russia, paper production began under Ivan the Terrible. And in the days of Peter I, paper enterprises were built according to the European model, after which a decree was issued on the collection of raw materials in the form of worn outleys and rags, as well as a ban on the use of foreign paper.