Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Post a new blog entry showcasing a modern-day invention that has solved one of Man's many problems. The size of this problem does not matter.One of the inventions that we have choose is paper.Paper is considered one of the Four Great Inventions of Ancient China, as the first standard paper making process was developed in China during the early 2nd century. During the Shang and Zhou dynasties of ancient China, documents were ordinarily written on bone or bamboo (on tablets or on bamboo strips sewn and rolled together into scrolls), making them very heavy and awkward to transport. The light material of silk was sometimes used, but was normally too expensive to consider. Indeed, most of the above materials were rare and costly.Paper spread slowly outside of China; other East Asian cultures, even after seeing paper, could not figure out how to make it themselves. Instruction in the manufacturing process was required, and the Chinese were reluctant to share their secrets. The paper was thin and translucent, not like modern western paper, and thus only written on one side. Books were invented in India, of Palm leaves (where we derive the name leaf for a sheet of a book). The technology was first transferred to Korea in 604 and then imported to Japan by a Buddhist priests, around 610, where fibres (called bast) from the mulberry tree were used.
If paper has not been invented, we would still be writing on bone, bamboo or silk which is heavy and awkward to transport. Not to mention it might be expensive as pandas eat bamboos and they are one of the endangered animals. If we are using bamboo as our textbooks and workbooks, pandas might already been extinct by today.
