The history of genuine paper happened in South East Asia. Similar to the indigenous people of Egypt, the Chinese had, nearly 5,000 years in the past, developed a style of writing that used images. They too had been using several types of things to scribe on, notably lengths of bamboo and silk woven into a fine fabric and possibly the barkcloth they utilized for other unconnected purposes from the Paper. Mulberry was ased too.
History leads us to believe that in 105 years after the birth of Christ a government worker by the name of Tsai Lung, brought out usable paper, though it is clear from archaeological discoveries that in fact it was being worked with in what is now the People's Republic of China for probably two hundred years prior to him.
In olden times writing was mainly done on some derivative of bamboo or occasionally on pieces of silk, which were called Ji in those days. However, silk was expensive and bamboo being very weighty, these materials were inconvenient. Due to this Tsai Lun came up with the idea of making use of tree bark, fish nets, rags, and hemp. In 105AD he delivered a report to the emperor about the production of paper and received much praise for his idea. Consequently, from those distant days paper has been used every place and is known as the "paper of Marquis Tsai".
If indeed this accolade is Marquis Tsai's entitlement, will probably not ever be known! Nevertheless the main consideration must be that it was found that they could pound some substances derived from plant matter in to a mache, extract impurities, place the mache in water, screen it out onto cloth sheets and give it time to dry out. When fully dried, it calcified into a hard, durable sheet that turned out to be particularly light, and providing it was not allowed to get damp, proved incredibly tough.
It's a fact that this very easy of paper making techniques is still being used in precisely the same way in Tibet and Nepal, the very first regions to learn the technolgies from China. A simple frame makes use of a cotton cloth made to stretch over a side, watery mash is poured into the far end and spread about until it is even. After which it is left somewhere to let the liquid to drain out of it and the mush to dry in to a parchment sheet which can be stripped off.
At some point in time a developer with great skills realized that manufacturing a frame with ribs and putting a delicate bamboo mat that is replaceable across this, would enable the paper-making procedure to be quickened fantastically. Instead of using a single mold for each paper sheet, therefore severely restricting the number of sheets that may be manufactured at one time, a stack of sieved paste could be built up a layer at a time, with merely a strip of cotton thread between them to help with separation at a later time. The stack would then be squeezed very lightly, and every layer of grume transferred to a dry board.