Cai Lun
Development of paper
### Development of paper

[thumb\|[Woodcuts](/wiki/Woodcut "Woodcut") depicting the five seminal steps in ancient Chinese [papermaking](/wiki/Papermaking "Papermaking"). From the 1637 *[Tiangong Kaiwu](/wiki/Tiangong_Kaiwu "Tiangong Kaiwu")* of the [Ming dynasty](/wiki/Ming_dynasty "Ming dynasty").\|alt\=A gif of five images of workers completing various manual tasks to create paper](/wiki/File:Making_Paper.gif "Making Paper.gif")

In 105, Cai publicly declared that he had invented a new composition for paper with a new papermaking process. Writing had a long history in China with writing surfaces being [bamboo and wooden slips](/wiki/Bamboo_and_wooden_slips "Bamboo and wooden slips") (wood for short text and [bamboo](/wiki/Bamboo "Bamboo") for lengthy text). These media were inconvenient as they were awkward to store, heavy, and difficult to write on. After [Meng Tian](/wiki/Meng_Tian "Meng Tian") purportedly created an animal\-hair brush for writing in 3rd\-century BCE, [silk](/wiki/Silk "Silk") and [cloth](/wiki/Textile "Textile") became alternatives that addressed these issues, but they were too expensive for widespread use. The absence of a practical solution motivated continued experimentation with different materials; Cai's [pulp](/wiki/Pulp_%28paper%29 "Pulp (paper)") solution proved the most effective. His process still used bamboo, but also introduced [hemp](/wiki/Hemp "Hemp") waste, old rags, [fishnets](/wiki/Fishing_net "Fishing net"), and most importantly, [bark](/wiki/Bark_%28botany%29 "Bark (botany)") from trees (likely [mulberry](/wiki/Morus_%28plant%29 "Morus (plant)")). The materials were boiled to a pulp that was beaten with a wood or stone mallet before being mixed with a large amount of water. The resulting mixture was then processed with wooden [sieves](/wiki/Sieve "Sieve") and the excess water removed, leaving the paper finished once dry. The paper that resulted from this method is often referred to as "Cai Hou paper" (). This event and its context are relayed in an often cited passage of the :

Many legends about the inspiration for Cai's invention exist; one of the most popular said that Cai was inspired by watching [paper wasps](/wiki/Paper_wasp "Paper wasp") make their nests. Tsien suggested that Cai was inspired by the people of his birthplace, who used bark from mulberry trees to create cloth as a writing surface. Irrespective of its origin, in 105 CE, Cai's new papermaking process both impressed He and earned him fame throughout the empire.


How might the absence of a practical papermaking solution have affected societal development in China?