The story of true paper started in what is now the People's Republic of China. Like the indigenous people of Egypt, the Chinese had, almost 5,000 years ago, invented a style of pictographic writing. They too had been using various kinds of things to write upon, most commonly lengths of bamboo and processed silk and possibly the barkcloth they utilized for other uses from the Paper. Mulberry was made use of too.
History leads us to believe that in 105 years after the birth of Christ a government worker named Tsai Lung, created usable paper, although it seems from archaeological discoveries that actually it was being worked with in South East Asia for more than likely two hundred years prior to him.
During ancient times setting down words was mainly done on some form of bamboo or on strips of silk, which were known as Ji then. Nonetheless the cost of silk and the weight of bamboo, these two materials were not convenient. Then Tsai Lun came up with the idea of making use of tree bark, hemp, fish nets, and rags. In 105AD he made a report to the emperor regarding the production of paper and was endowed with high praise for his ideas. Consequently, from those distant days paper has been utilized everywhere and is known as the "paper of Marquis Tsai".
If indeed this title is Marquis Tsai's entitlement or not, will probably never be uncovered! However, the most important factor has to be that the discovery was made that if they ground certain substances taken from plants in to a pulp, depose impure materials, place the pulp in liquid, sieve it out onto cloth sheets and give it time to dry out. When it dried, it dried into a hard, dense sheet that turned out to be particularly light, and providing it was not allowed to come into contact with water, proved extraordinarily resilient.
It's a fact that this most simple of paper making techniques is even now practised in exactly a similar way within Tibet and Nepal, the very first places to learn the techniques from China. A basic frame utilizes a cloth manufactured from cotton stretched over one side, thin mache is emptied into the far side and moved around until it has reached an even state. It is then left suspended that will allow the water to drain and the grume to dry into a sheet of parchment which may be peeled off.
As time passed a developer with great skills figured that constructing a frame with an arrangement of ribbing and putting a delicate removable bamboo mat across this, would enable the paper-making procedure to be speeded up greatly. Instead of using one mold for every parchment sheet, severely limiting the number of sheets that are able to be made at the same time, a stack of sieved mash was able to be built up layer upon layer, with merely a strip of cotton thread between them to enable later separation. The stack would then be squeezed very slightly, and each layer of mush moved to a dry place.