Machine for making paper

The ‘machine for making paper in very long lengths’ that Louis Nicolas Robert patented in 1799, was designed to cater for growing demand and to limit production costs. The machine reproduces the manual gestures and principal stages of fabrication, from the pulp’s preparation in a bath with rollers that tear up the hemp, linen and cotton rags, to the spreading of the liquid paste, which is then pressed, dried and rolled onto drums. It was now possible to produce sheets and rolls in all formats, particularly for the press and wallpaper industries then in full expansion. More than two hundred of these machines were in use in the 1840s, compared to only fifty-four in 1834. Wood pulp, cheaper to produce, definitively replaced rag-based paper around 1880.