Paper and Printing

Of the 'four great inventions of ancient China' -- paper, printing, gunpowder, and the magnetic compass -- the one whose Chinese origins and dissemination westerward are documented in greatest detail is papermaking. Paradoxically, paper is also the most important 'new invention', unknown in antiquity, which is missing from the Nova reperta of Jan van der Straet and from Francis Bacon's famous list. The reason, perhaps, is that paper had become so fundamental to European life by the early seventeenth century that neither Bacon nor Stradanus could imagine life without it. In the Latin West, the advent of papermaking was rapidly followed by the (re)invention of printing with moveable type.  The introductory materials for these two related innovations have been provided by Howard Hotson (May 2019).