3. six thousand wagons: Joel Munsell, Chronology of the Origin and Progress of Paper and Paper-Making (New York: Garland, 1980; facsimile of 5th ed., Albany: J. Munsell, 1876), p. 146. Munsell derived this figure from “The Rag and Paper Business,” New York Tribune, November 4, 1856, p. 3.
4. Mill women sorted: See Library of Congress, Papermaking: Art and Craft (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1968), illus. p. 67.
5. four-inch squares: “The woman stands so as to have the back of the blade opposite to her, while at her right hand on the floor is a large wooden box, with several divisions. Her business consists in examining the rags, opening the seams, removing dirt, pins, needles, and buttons of endless variety, which would be liable to injure the machinery, or damage the quality of the paper. She then cuts the rags into small pieces, not exceeding four inches square, by drawing them sharply across the edge of the knife, at the same time keeping each quality distinct in the several divisions of the box placed on her right hand. During this process, much of the dirt, sand, and so forth, passes through the wire cloth into a drawer underneath, which is occasionally cleaned out.” Richard Herring, Paper and Paper Making, Ancient and Modern, 3d ed. (London: Longmans, Green, 1863), pp. 75–76.
6. cutting machine: O’Brien, Story of the Sun; Munsell, Chronology, p. 82.
7. black specks: Herring, Paper and Paper Making, p. 88. India rubber, writes Herring, “is a source of much greater annoyance to the paper maker than is readily conceived.”
8. equal to England’s and France’s combined: Munsell, Chronology, p. 144.
9. Rag imports: Munsell, Chronology, pp. 126, 138.
10. “Complaints of the price and scarcity”: Munsell, Chronology, p. 136.
11. “on account of the high price”: Munsell, Chronology, p. 136.
12. Several generations of papermakers: See Munsell, Chronology, and Dard Hunter, Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1943).
13. a paper made from horseradish: Munsell, Chronology, p. 137.
14. “seem to invite us”: Quoted in Hunter, Papermaking, p. 233.
15. “reluctant to spare even a fragment”: Hunter, Papermaking, p. 286n.
16. “flames would literally spout”: Quoted in Bob Brier, Egyptian Mummies (New York: William Morrow, 1994), p. 318.
17. “locomotives of Egypt”: Mummies were bought “by the ton or by the graveyard” as locomotive fuel, Mark Twain half-skeptically noted in his 1869 book of travels, Innocents Abroad. Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad; or, the New Pilgrims’ Progress (New York: Hippocrene Books, n.d.; facsimile of Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company, 1869), p. 632.
18. Punch: “Musings on Mummy-Paper,” Punch 12 (May 29, 1847), p. 224.
19. twenty-three tons: Munsell, Chronology, p. 120.
20. “fairer (Pharaoh)”: The pun is Deck’s, not mine.
21. exactly contemporary with the publication: Deck’s article is dated “March, 1855” at the end, although it appeared in the 1854 volume of the American Institute’s Transactions.
22. J. Priestly bought 1,215 bales: Munsell, Chronology, p. 142.
23. “It is within”: “The Rag and Paper Business,” New York Tribune, November 4, 1856.
24. “made from the wrappages”: “Paper from Egyptian Mummies,” Syracuse Daily Standard, August 19, 1856 (undated editorial reprinted from The Albany Journal). See also Munsell, Chronology, p. 149.
25. “into the hopper”: Munsell, Chronology, p. 198. The report appeared in an editorial in the Bunker Hill Aurora, sometime in 1866.
26. Dard Hunter was oddly hesitant: Hunter, Papermaking, pp. 287–91. Joseph Dane goes further. He believes mummy paper to be a “delusion” and a “myth,” and he has no confidence in Hunter’s sources for Syracuse, Broadalbin, and Gardiner; and he isn’t at all sure about Deck’s Swiftian proposal, either. But Dane hasn’t read Deck’s proposal, which, he says, is “untraceable”—Hunter gave no citation for it and called it a “manuscript,” which makes Dane suspicious. I traced Deck by calling the helpful librarian at the Onondaga Historical Association, Judy Haven. Joseph A. Dane, “The Curse of the Mummy Paper,” Printing History 18:2 (1995).
27. Horace Greeley: Greeley was an active member of the American Institute; he became its president in 1866. John Campbell, a paper merchant a few doors down from Dr. Deck on Nassau Street, was also a member of the Institute in 1855. I found them listed in a scarce pamphlet owned by Columbia University: Catalogue of the Life and Annual Members of the American Institute of the City of New York (New York: New York Printing Co., 1868).
28. Richard Hoe: Hoe’s specialty was high-speed presses. Without plentiful, cheap paper, publishers would be less likely to convert to faster equipment; I speculate that Hoe may have had an interest in Deck’s proposal for that reason. Hoe had served on the committee in 1852 that organized the Institute’s popular fair at Castle Garden (now Battery Park), where novelties of science and engineering were awarded prizes. Morse’s telegraph was first displayed at the 1842 fair; Walt Whitman delivered a “Song of the Exposition” to open the 1871 fair, announcing that America would build a cathedral of sacred industry that was “mightier than Egypt’s tombs.”
29. whiskey blenders: Nicolas Barker is the source of this image.
30. Hall and McChesney: Hendrix TenEyck, an executive of Hall and McChesney, was president of the American Microfilm Association when Verner Clapp gave his keynote address in 1959.
CHAPTER 7 — Already Worthless
1. “A Life-Cycle Cost Analysis”: William Richard Lemberg, Ph.D. diss., School of Library and Information Studies, University of California at Berkeley, 1995, www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/publications/DigtlDoc.pdf. Michael Buckland, Lemberg’s thesis supervisor at Berkeley, writes that “one of the principal expected benefits of the move from paper-based to digital libraries is in the massive cost-savings expected to result from an expected reduction in duplication.” Michael Buckland, “Searching Multiple Digital Libraries: A Design Analysis” (Berkeley: University of California, 1995), www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/oasis/multisrch.htm (viewed August 13, 2000).
2. “the most valuable fibre”: Munsell, Chronology. Munsell is at first unfamiliar with esparto grass, calling it “spartum,” “Exparto,” and “waterbroom”—he attributes its initial use to a Parisian stationer named Jean A. Farina, in 1852. The material “at first encountered great opposition both from proprietors and their workmen, but finally assumed vast importance as a raw material” (p. 124). In 1866, Lloyd’s Newspaper imported two hundred and sixty tons of esparto grass to London (p. 200); in 1870, there was an esparto shortage, and the price more than doubled (p. 213); in 1871, Lloyd, the newspaper publisher, owned 180,000 acres in Algeria, on which he raised his own esparto crop (p. 221); in 1872, English esparto imports had passed 130,000 tons, and Munsell writes that the Times “was printed on paper made more or less of this material, as was that of most of the other leading journals, periodicals and current publications generally” (p. 226). In its article “Paper,” the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica has a large and handsome engraving of the “Sinclair Esparto Boiler,” featuring recirculative “vomiting pipes,” and no pictures of wood-pulping equipment. See also British Paper and Board Makers’ Association, Paper Making: A General Account of Its History, Processes, and Applications (Kenley, Eng., 1950), pp. 31, 47, 101. The turn-of-the-century English book, then, is likely to have little or no wood pulp in it; American paper and English paper have different compositions and are likely to age differently.