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Was early modern writing paper expensive? (2018)
- Bluestein 2y ago- https://www.folger.edu/blogs/collation/writing-paper-expensive/ https://www.folger.edu/blogs/collation/writing-paper-expensi...
- kfarr 2y agoTLDR: no according to this source
- kwhitefoot 2y agoThings are not inherently expensive. They are expensive relative to the other demands on one's finances. For the average person paper would indeed have been expensive but for those who had disposable income and a reason to use paper it would have felt less so. But it was certainly more expensive than it is now that 500 sheets of A4 at Tesco cost less than 5 GBP and that is one part in 6 400 of UK median annual household income. https://www.folger.edu/blogs/collation/writing-paper-expensive/ https://www.folger.edu/blogs/collation/writing-paper-expensi... says that the going rate for a quire of ordinary paper was about 4d. Even in 1800 annual income for most people was under 20 pounds. So 500 sheets would cost one part in 60 of annual income (20 pounds * 240 pennies per pound/(4d per quire * 20 quires in 500)). That's about a hundred times more expensive in purchasing power terms. Presumably the further back you go the higher the price and the lower the income. But the poor didn't write so the comparison is far from exact. For the wealthy it would still have been more expensive than now but not importantly so.
- Bluestein 2y agoLogic would posit that market forces would adjust the price, or that proceses would adjust to match demand.-
- ghaff 2y agoMarket forces can't (sustainably) adjust price to less than the cost of production. They can spur process and other improvements to reduce cost but that does take time and isn't always possible, especially in the near-term.
- Bluestein 2y agoThanks. Makes perfect sense.- PS. One thing I have always found fascinating - obvious as it might be - is that paper (and paper in large, sufficiently cheap industrial quantities) was a prerequisite for the printing press "revolution" to take place ...
- ghaff 2y agoTechnology trees are definitely a thing. The answer to "Could the Romans have invented an arbitrary fairly modern thing?" is almost always no because they would also have needed a bunch of other resources and inventions that didn't exist yet (and which they might have had little interest in pursuing given that they had plenty of cheap labor, etc.)
- Bluestein 2y agoAh, were the Romans to have had antibiotics, eh?
- ghaff 2y agoSome health-related things are an area where important advances could probably have happened earlier in principle: germ theory of disease, importance of sanitation, some relatively simple advances like antibiotics... All seem doable in principle relative to inventing a lot of 19th century industrial revolution devices. ADDED: The Romans did apparently have some knowledge of antibiotics without presumably understanding the mechanisms or refining them. Per Wikipedia and other sources: "Antibiotics have been used since ancient times. Many civilizations used topical application of moldy bread, with many references to its beneficial effects arising from ancient Egypt, Nubia, China, Serbia, Greece, and Rome."
- Puts 2y agoFun fact – italic typefaces was invented to save paper since slanted letters allow tighter kerning.
- thombat 2y agoCan you dig out a reference for that? WP describes it as evolving from a representation of handwriting, initially used for informal or intimate writing, later being employed for emphasis.
- jfengel 2y agoSomething I've been unable to figure out: what is the trick you have to invent to make wood pulp paper? Is it chemical, or do you just need to keep smashing at wood chips in water?
- Bluestein 2y agoMy understanding is that both chemical and mechanical are methods.-
- bsder 2y agoWood pulp is extremely tough. Why use water power to pulp wood for a very long time when you can use it to pulp rags for a much shorter time to get the same amount of product? Water power is limited. Consequently, you have to make choices as to what you are going to use it for. At that point economics kick in. Until your demand for paper significantly exceeds supply, you won't start looking for a better process. And then it took until the steam engine until such a process became economical.
- Bluestein 2y ago> At that point economics kick in. (And chemicals ...)
- bsder 2y agoYou have to prove that wood pulp works well enough before anybody will invest in the chemistry research. Proving that wood pulp works effectively for paper requires the steam engine. Technological advance almost always consists of many incremental steps that have to come together simultaneously. Generally, the limitation was economic--if there was enough money at stake humans are clever enough that they will find a way.
- unlikelymordant 2y agoYou need to break down the lignin without damaging the cellulose. Boiling and mashing doesnt do this very well, you still get bundles of fibres sticking together, you really need them all to separate. The bonds holding lignins together are slightly different between grasses and wood. For grasses sodium carbonate or hydroxide dissolves the lignin pretty well (i havnt tried but you could probably get away with wood ash and some salt for this, to provide sodium and high ph), and allows you to make some pretty nice paper. This as far as i know includes things like papyrus, sugarcane etc. Wood is different, you need sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfate to dissolve the lignin. This contributes to the smell of the paper making process where wood is used. I dont think the ancients knew about the use of sulfates, so their papers were mostly made of grasses or leather (vellum).
- dang 2y agoRelated: Was early modern writing paper expensive? (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20559968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20559968 - July 2019 (4 comments)
- asdefghyk 2y agoI have a note , written by my grandmother in , aroun 1930, that indicates paper was expensive for her. She was a farmers wife
- WalterBright 2y agoDuring WW2, the Germans started a large operation to print counterfeit 5 pound notes. The intent was to "bomb" them over England to bankrupt the currency. But the end of the war overtook the operation, and the notes were dumped in the nearby river. The locals fished the notes out and used them for TP. (The manufacture of TP was a casualty of priority war production.) "Money of Their Own" by Murray Bloom https://www.amazon.com/Money-Their-Own-Ingenious-Counterfeiters/dp/B0007HVXUC/ https://www.amazon.com/Money-Their-Own-Ingenious-Counterfeit... The BBC made a comedic miniseries about this, I forgot the name. All I remember is one of officers saying "if you don't do this, you'll be shot and then you'll be sorry!"
- bromuro 2y agoWhat is “TP”?
- slater 2y agoToilet paper.
- NoFunPedant 2y agoThe BBC miniseries was called "Private Schultz": https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081919/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081919/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
- WalterBright 2y agoThank you. I checked the library, ebay, and amazon for it - no luck!
- thombat 2y agoThat officer will have been Major Neuheim, a blustering and venial SS bureaucrat played with panache by Ian Richardson (not unlike his role as Mr Warrenn in "Brazil"). I'm also puzzled how little-known the series has become, since I remember it fondly.
- Merrill 2y ago"Prices and the Growth of the European Knowledge Economy, 1200-2007" by Rodney Edvinsson and Johan Söderberg Department of Economic History Stockholm University: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:384596/FULLTEXT01.pdf https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:384596/FULLTEXT0... See page 10, Figure 5: Price of paper/CPI in England, 1356-1869, and the Netherlands, 1450-1800. This shows that the price of paper declined exponentially from 1350 to 1650. The decrease in the cost of paper made printing economical. Printing on vellum was not. They point out that each Gutenberg Bible printed on vellum required the skins of 300 sheep.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoThe causality can easily run in the other direction, with the desire to print things pushing people into using cheap, shoddy paper instead of quality vellum.
- WalterBright 2y agoI have many books, and none of them are on sheepskin. They are not printed on cheap, shoddy paper.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoWhy do you say so? Would printing them on vellum make them cheaper, or shoddier?
- Merrill 2y agoThe cost of the hides and the labor of turning them into vellum dominated the labor of inscribing a page. Printing would not decrease the cost of finished pages, especially for small numbers of copies. The decrease in the cost of paper resulted from the increased availability of linen rags, use of wind power in production of rag pulp, and the larger volumes of rag paper used for commercial records and correspondence before the invention of printing.
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- wizardforhire 2y agoJames Burke said it best https://youtube.com/watch?v=-XoTGFC-0NA&pp=ygUrQ29ubmVjdGlvbnMgamFtZXMgYnVya2UgcGFwZXIgcmFnIGFuZCBib25lcw%3D%3D https://youtube.com/watch?v=-XoTGFC-0NA&pp=ygUrQ29ubmVjdGlvb...
- Bluestein 2y agoBurke for President.-