英文文章两篇.doc

Step 3 The History of papermaking in the UK The first reference to a paper mill in the United Kingdom was in a book printed by Wynkende Worde in about 1495.This mill belonged to a certain John Tate and was near Hertford. Other early mills included one at Dartford, owned by Sir John Speilman, who was granted special privileges for the collection of rags by Queen Elizabeth and one built in Buckinghamshire before the end of the sixteenth century. During the first half of the seventeenth century, mills were established near Edinburgh, at Cannock Chase in Staffordshire, and several in Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Surrey. The Bank of England has been issuing bank notes since 1691. with simple watermarks in them since at least 1697. Henri de Portal was awarded the contract in December 1721 for producing the Bank of England watermarked bank-note paper at Bere Mill in Hampshire. Portals have retained this contract ever since but production is no longer at Bere Mill. There were two major developments at about the middle of the eighteenth century in the paper industry in the UK. The first was the introduction of the rag engine or hollander, invented in Holland sometime before 1670, which replaced the stamping mills, which had previously been used, for the disintegration of the rags and beating of the pulp. The second was in the design and construction of the mould used for forming the sheet. Early moulds had straight wires sewn down on to the wooden foundation, this produced an irregular surface showing the characteristic “laid marks, and, when printed on. the ink did not give clear, sharp lines. Baskerville, a Birmingham printer, wanted a smoother paper. James Whatman the Elder developed a woven wire fabric, thus leading to his production of the first woven paper in 1757. Increasing demands for more paper during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries led to shortages of the rags needed to produce the paper. Part of the problem was that no satisfactory method