The history of genuine paper started in what is now the People's Republic of China. Similar to the indigenous people of Egypt, the Chinese had, nearly fifty centuries ago, created a kind of writing that used pictures. They also had been using various types of objects to scribe on, most commonly pieces of bamboo and woven silk and it is possible that the barkcloth they were using for other reasons derived from the Paper. Mulberry was made use of as well.
History points to the fact that in 105 years after the birth of Christ a government worker going by the name of Tsai Lung, developed paper, though it is clear from archaeological digs that actually it was around in China for at least two hundred years before Tsai Lung.
Way back during times gone by setting down words or pictograms was usually done on some form of bamboo or on strips of silk, which were called Ji in those days. However, the great price of silk and bamboo being too weighty, these two materials were inconvenient. At this time Tsai Lun came up with the idea of making use of the bark from trees, hemp, rags, and fish nets. In 105AD he submitted a report to the emperor regarding the process of making paper and was endowed with high accolade for his ideas. Since then paper has been in use globally and is known as the "paper of Marquis Tsai".
Whether the above title is Marquis Tsai's entitlement or not, will likely not ever be known! Nevertheless the important consideration has to be that it was discovered that if they pounded certain plant derived substances into a grume, oust spume, place the grume in water, screen it out onto textile sheets giving it enough time to dry out. When fully dried, it conglomerated into a firm, dense sheet that turned out to be remarkably light, and as long as it was not allowed to come into contact with water, turned out to be extremely robust.
It's a fact that this simple of papermaking techniques is even now in use in exactly the same way in Nepal and Tibet, the very first regions to take the technolgies from South East Asia. A simple frame makes use of a cotton cloth stretched over a single side, watery mache is put in to the other side and moved around until it is level. Then it is left in order for it to enable the liquid to leave it and the pulp to dry in to a sheet of parchment which may be removed by stripping off.
By and by an extremely talented individual worked out that building a frame with ribbing and putting a delicate removable bamboo mat across this, would let the paper-making process to be speeded up to a great degree. Instead of using one mould for every sheet of paper, consequently severely restricting the number of sheets that could be manufactured at the same time, a stack of sieved mush was able to be built up layer upon layer, with merely a strip of cotton thread between them in order to facilitate later separation. The stack would then be squeezed slightly, and each sheet of mash shifted to a board to dry.