The story of genuine paper started in South East Asia. Similar to the indigenous people of Egypt, the Chinese had, almost 5,000 years in the past, developed a style of writing that used images. The Egyptians also had been making use of many different kinds of things to write on, most commonly lengths of bamboo and woven silk and possibly the barkcloth they were making for other uses derived out of the Paper. Mulberry was ased too.
Historical documentation tells us that in 105AD a government worker named Tsai Lung, created papyrus, though it appears from archaeological finds that it was actually being worked with in China for more than likely two centuries before Tsai Lung.
Way back in times gone by scribing was usually on some form of bamboo or sometimes on pieces of silk, which were called Ji in those days. Nonetheless the cost of silk and bamboo being very weighty, these materials were inconvenient. Around then Tsai Lun thought of utilizing tree bark, rags, hemp, and fish nets. In 105 years after the birth of Christ he delivered a report to the emperor on the process of paper manufacture and was endowed with high praise for his idea. From that time paper has been availed of globally and is called the "paper of Marquis Tsai".
If indeed this title is correct, will very likely never be known! But the major factor must be that it was discovered that if they ground particular compounds taken from plant matter in to a mash, oust impurities, put the mash in liquid, filter it out onto cloth sheets and allow it to dry. After drying, it congealed into a hard, robust sheet that was decidedly light, and provided that it was not allowed to get wet, proved astonishingly durable.
It's a fact that this very simple of paper making techniques is even now in use in exactly a similar way around Tibet and Nepal, the very first regions to take the technolgies from what is now the People's Republic of China. A simple frame has a cloth made from cotton stretched over one side, very watery grume is poured into the other side and moved around until it is even. After which it is left that will allow the water to drain out of it and the mush to dry into a paper sheet which can be removed.
At some point in time an extremely talented developer realized that building a frame with ribbing and placing a fine bamboo mat that is removable over it, would enable the process to be quickened greatly. Rather than tying up one mould for every parchment sheet, severely limiting the amount of sheets that could be made at one time, a stack of sieved mache was able to be built up layer upon layer, with merely a piece of cotton thread between them which would facilitate later separation. The stack would then be squeezed gently, and each layer of paste moved to a place to dry.