The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous ... - Cd3wd.com

LINEN AND COTTON PAPER. 413
be a sufficient, in all cases, to equal twelve pounds of pure black
salts. One hundred pounds of wood will, if well attended to,
make from five to seven reams of paper*.
* Mr. Edmund Shaw, of Fenchurch Street, London, obtained a patent in Eng-
land bearing date September 14, 18.37, for a method of manufacturing paper from
the leaves which cover the ears of Indian-corn.
According to this patent the envelopes or leaves whicli cover the corn are in
the first instance put into a vessel containing water. The water may be pure or
slightly alkaline ; the water is then boiled in the vessel into which the aforesaid
envelopes or fellicular leaves are thrown, after being macerated. When they
have imbibed water and become thickened and swollen, so that the matter inter-
posed between the fibres is reduced to a state of pulp or jelly, a slight beating by
fulling, mallet, or other mechanical means will effect a separation of the fibre
from the adherent glutinous matter, and washing or rinsing with water during the
beating, will cleanse it entirely from the glutinous matter.
The fibre is then bleached, by immersing, or immersing and beating or stirring
it about in a solution of chloride of lime, or with beating engines, as at present
practised for the bleaching of rags in paper mills, and the fibre is in like manner
reduced to pulp, and paper manufactured therefrom, or the quality of the paper
may be varied by the admixture of a portion of rags or other filamentous sub-
stance.
It may be well to remark, that some attempts to produce paper from the above
mentioned material, have been made, but were abandoned from the incapability
of producing good white paper.
The patentee claims the mode, or process, above described of mediing white pa-
per by the application of bleached pulp, produced from the stalks or leaves of In-
dian-corn.