Cai Lun and the Invention of Paper

105 CE — East Asia, Han China

Today: Han China (the imperial court)

A Han court official named Cai Lun refined a recipe — tree bark, rags, and old fishing nets pulped and pressed into thin sheets — that gave the world cheap, light, abundant paper. It replaced clumsy bamboo strips and costly silk, and over the next thousand years it spread west along the Silk Road to the Islamic world and finally to Europe, where it would make the printing press possible. Every information revolution needs a cheap surface to write on; paper was the quiet one beneath all the others.

Worth knowing: Paper crept westward so slowly it took over a thousand years to travel from China to Europe — arriving just in time to feed Gutenberg's printing press and the upheaval it unleashed.

Pattern: Information-medium revolution — A new way to record or transmit information lowers the cost of copying ideas and reorders who holds knowledge and power.

Entry 72 of 240 in Precedent, a walk through the whole human story in order.