Cai Lun

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Cai Lun

Cai Lun (ca. 50 AD – 121), courtesy name Jingzhong, was a Chinese

China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
eunuch

Eunuch

A eunuch is a castrated man, in particular one castrated early enough to have major hormonal consequences; the term usually refers to those castrated in order to perform a specific social function, as was common in many societies of the past....
, who is conventionally regarded as the inventor

Inventor

An inventor is a person who creates or discovers a new method, form, device or other useful means. The word inventor comes form the latin verb invenire, invent-, to find....
of paper

Paper

Paper is thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon or packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets....
and the papermaking

Papermaking

Papermaking is the process of making paper, a substance which is used ubiquitously today for writing and packaging.In papermaking a dilute suspension of fibers in water is drained through a screen, so that a mat of randomly interwoven fibers is laid down....
process, in forms recognizable in modern times as paper (as opposed to Egypt

Egypt

Egypt is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia. Covering an area of about , Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west....
ian papyrus

Papyrus

Papyrus is a thick paper material produced from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland Cyperaceae that was once abundant in the Nile Delta of Egypt....
). Although paper existed in China before Cai Lun (since the 2nd century BC), he was responsible for the first significant improvement and standardization of papermaking by adding essential new materials into its composition.

Lun was born in Guiyang (modern day Leiyang

Leiyang

Leiyang is a county-level city in Hengyang, Hunan in China. It has over 1.3 million inhabitants. Cai Lun, inventor of paper, was born and lived in Leiyang....
) during the Eastern Han Dynasty

Han Dynasty

The Han Dynasty followed the Qin Dynasty and preceded the Three Kingdoms in China. The Han Dynasty was ruled by the family known as the Liu clan who had peasant origins....
.

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Encyclopedia

Cai Lun (ca. 50 AD – 121), courtesy name Jingzhong, was a Chinese

China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
eunuch

Eunuch

Inventor

An inventor is a person who creates or discovers a new method, form, device or other useful means. The word inventor comes form the latin verb invenire, invent-, to find....
of paper

Paper

Papermaking

Egypt

Papyrus

Life

Cai Lun was born in Guiyang (modern day Leiyang

Leiyang

Leiyang is a county-level city in Hengyang, Hunan in China. It has over 1.3 million inhabitants. Cai Lun, inventor of paper, was born and lived in Leiyang....
) during the Eastern Han Dynasty

Han Dynasty

The Han Dynasty followed the Qin Dynasty and preceded the Three Kingdoms in China. The Han Dynasty was ruled by the family known as the Liu clan who had peasant origins....
. After serving as a court eunuch since 75 AD, he was given several promotions under the rule of Emperor He of Han

Emperor He of Han

Emperor He of Han, Chinese character ???, Pinyin. h?n h? d?, Wade-Giles. Han Ho-ti, was an emperor of China of the Chinese Han Dynasty who ruled from 88 to 105....
. In 89 AD he was promoted with the title of Shang Fang Si, an office in charge of manufacturing instruments and weapons; he also became a paperwork secretary. He became involved in intrigue, as a supporter of Empress Dou

Empress Dou (Zhang)

Empress Dou , formally Empress Zhangde , was an empress during Han Dynasty. Her husband was Emperor Zhang of Han. She was already influential during her husband's reign, but became particularly powerful as empress dowager regent for her adoptive son Emperor He of Han after Emperor Zhang's death....
, was involved in the death of her romantic rival, Consort Song

Consort Song

Consort Song , posthumous title Empress Jingyin , was an imperial consort for Emperor Zhang of Han who was the victim of palace intrigue at the hands of Emperor Zhang's wife Empress Dou ....
and became an associate of Empress Deng Sui

Empress Deng Sui

Empress Deng Sui , formally Empress Hexi was an empress during Han Dynasty. She was Emperor He of Han's second wife. She later, as empress dowager, served as regent for his son Emperor Shang of Han and nephew Emperor An of Han, and was regarded as an able and diligent administrator....
.

In 105 AD, along with help from an imperial consort Deng, Cai invented the composition for paper along with the papermaking process - though he may have been credited with an invention of somebody from a lower class. Though tools and machinery of papermaking in modern times may be more complex, they still employ the ancient technique of felted sheets of fiber suspended in water, draining of the water, and then drying into a thin matted sheet. For this invention Cai would be world-renowned posthumously, and even in his own time he was given recognition for his invention. A part of his official biography

Biography

A biography is a description of someone's life, usually published in the form of a book or essay, or in some other form, such as a film. An autobiography is a biography by the same person it is about....
written later in China read thus (Wade-Giles spelling):

As listed above, the papermaking process included the use of materials like bark

BARK

BARK was an early Electromechanics. BARK was built using standard phone relays, implementing a 32-bit binary machine and could perform addition in 150 ms and multiplication in 250 ms....
, hemp

Hemp

File:Industrialhemp.jpgHemp is the common name for plants of the entire genus Cannabis, although the term is often used to refer only to Cannabis strains cultivated for industrial use....
, silk

Silk

Fishing net

A fishing net or fishnet is a Net that is used for fishing. Fishing nets are meshes usually formed by knotting a relatively thin thread....
; his exact formula has been lost. Emperor He was pleased with the invention and granted Cai an aristocratic title and great wealth.

In 121, Consort Song's grandson Emperor An of Han

Emperor An of Han

Emperor An of H?n, Chinese character ???, Pinyin. h?n an d?, Wade-Giles. Han An-ti, was an emperor of China of the Chinese Han Dynasty and the sixth emperor of the Eastern H?n period ruling from 106 to 125....
assumed power after Empress Deng's death and Cai was ordered to report to prison. Before he was to report, he committed suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the intentional taking of one's own life. Many dictionaries also note the metaphorical sense of "willful destruction of one's self-interest"....
by drinking poison

Poison

In the context of biology, poisons are Chemical substance that can cause disturbances to organisms, usually by chemical reaction or other activity on the molecular scale, when a sufficient quantity is absorbed by an organism....
after taking a bath and dressing in fine silk robes. Cai was later revered in Chinese ancestor worship

Ancestor worship

Ancestor worship or ancestor veneration is a practice based on the belief that deceased family members have a continued existence, take an interest in the affairs of the world, and/or possess the ability to influence the fortune of the living....
. Fei Zhu of the later Song Dynasty

Song Dynasty

The Song Dynasty was a ruling Chinese dynasty in China between 960–1279 AD; it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, and was followed by the Yuan Dynasty....
(960-1279) wrote that a temple

Temple

A temple is a structure reserved for religious or spiritual activities, such as prayer and sacrifice, or analogous rites. A ??templum?? constituted a sacred precinct as defined by a priest, or augur....
in honor of Cai Lun had been erected in Chengdu

Chengdu

Chengdu , located in southwest People's Republic of China, is the capital of Sichuan provinces of China and a sub-provincial city. Chengdu is also one of the most important economic centers and transportation and communication hubs in Southwestern China....
, where several hundred families involved in the papermaking industry traveled five miles from the south to come and pay respects.

Influence

While paper is widely used worldwide today, the creator of this extremely important invention is only somewhat known outside East Asia

East Asia

East Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either Geography or cultural terms. Geography and geopolitically, it covers about 12,000,000 km?, or about 28 percent of the Asian continent, about 15 percent bigger than the area of Europe, though some categorize Tibet, Xinjiang, and Mongolia as Central Asia....
. After Cai invented the papermaking process in 105, it became widely used as a writing medium in China by the 3rd century. It enabled China to develop its civilization (through widespread literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works. Literally translated, the word means "acquaintance with letters" . In Western culture the most basic written literary types include fiction and non-fiction....
and literacy

Literacy

The traditional definition of literacy is considered to be the ability to read and write, or the ability to use language to Reading , Writing, Listening, and Speech communication....
) much faster than it had with earlier writing materials (primarily bamboo

Bamboo

The bamboos are a group of woody perennial plant evergreen plants in the true grass family Poaceae, subfamily Bambusoideae, tribe Bambuseae....
and silk

Silk

Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be weaving into textiles. The best-known type of silk is obtained from Pupa#Cocoons made by the larvae of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori reared in captivity ....
).

By the 7th century, China's papermaking technique had spread to Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. In 751, some Chinese paper makers were captured by Arabs after Tang

Tang Dynasty

The Tang Dynasty was an Dynasties in Chinese history preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire....
troops were defeated in the Battle of Talas

Battle of Talas

The Battle of Talas in 751 AD was a conflict between the Arab Empire Abbasid and the China Tang Dynasty for control of the Syr Darya. The Chinese army was defeated following the routing of their troops by the Abbasids on the bank of the Talas River ....
River

Talas River

The Talas River rises in the Talas Province of Kyrgyzstan and flows west into Kazakhstan. It is formed from the confluence of the Karakol and Uch-Koshoy....
. The techniques of papermaking then spread to the West. When paper was first introduced to Europe

Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
in the 12th century, it gradually revolutionized the manner in which written communication could be spread from region to region. Along with contact between Arabs and Europeans during the Crusades

Crusades

The Crusades were a series of religious war waged by much of Christian Europe against external and internal opponents. Crusades were fought mainly against Muslims, though campaigns were also directed against Paganism Slavic peoples, Jews, Eastern Orthodox Church, Mongols, Catharism, Hussites, Waldensians, Old Prussians, and political enemi...
(with the essential recovery of ancient Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
written classics), the widespread use of paper aided the foundation of the Scholastic Age

Scholasticism

Scholasticism was the dominant form of theology and philosophy in the Western Europe in the Middle Ages, particularly in the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries....
in Europe.

Popular culture

Cai Lun was ranked #7 on Michael H. Hart

Michael H. Hart

Michael H. Hart is an astrophysicist who has also written three books on history and controversial articles on a variety of subjects.Hart, a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science who enlisted in the U.S....
's list of the most influential figures in history

The 100

The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History is a 1978 book by Michael H. Hart. It is a ranking of the 100 people who most influenced human history....
.