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Paper is a thin nonwoven material traditionally made from a combination of milled plant and textile fibres. The first paper-like plant-based writing sheet was papyrus in Egypt, but the first true papermaking process was documented in China during the Eastern Han period (25–220 AD), traditionally attributed to the court official Cai Lun.
Papermaking is traditionally believed to have been invented by Cai Lun, a Chinese eunuch and official during the Eastern Han Dynasty, around 105 CE. Cai Lun’s contribution to papermaking involved the refinement of the process, making it more consistent and practical for widespread use.
Papermaking can be traced to about ad 105, when Ts’ai Lun, an official attached to the Imperial court of China, created a sheet of paper using mulberry and other bast fibres along with fishnets, old rags, and hemp waste.
Paper was first made in Lei-Yang, China by Ts'ai Lun, a Chinese court official. In all likelihood, Ts'ai mixed mulberry bark, hemp and rags with water, mashed it into pulp, pressed out the liquid and hung the thin mat to dry in the sun.
Paper has been traced to China in about ad 105. It reached Central Asia by 751 and Baghdad by 793, and by the 14th century there were paper mills in several parts of Europe.
So, where did this marvelously versatile material come from? According to ancient Chinese historical sources, a court eunuch named Ts'ai Lun (or Cai Lun) presented the newly-invented paper to the Emperor Hedi of the Eastern Han Dynasty in 105 CE.
In 1719, a French biologist, Rene Antoine Ferchault De Reaumur, wrote a scientific paper pointing out that wasps could make paper nests by chewing wood, so why couldn't humans?