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Show BLOTTING PAPER. Blotting paper was discovered purely by accident. Some ordinary paper was being made one day at a mill in Berkshire when a careless workman forgot to put In the sizing material. It may be imagined what angry scenes would take place in that mill, as the whole of the paper made was regarded as being quite useless. The proprietor of the mill desired to write a note shortly afterward, and he took a piece of waste paper, thinking think-ing it was good enough for the purpose pur-pose To his intens.e annoyance the ink spread all over the paper. All of the thought that this paper would do a sudden thought flashed over his mind instead of sand for drying ink, and he at once advertised his waste paper as "blotting." The reason the paper is of use in drying ink is that really it is a mass of hairlike tubes which suck up liquid by capillary attraction. If a very fine glass tube is put into water the liquia will rise in it owing to capillary attraction. at-traction. The art of manufacturing blotting paper has been carried to such a degree that the product has wonderful absorbent qualities. The original blotting paper was of a pink color, due to the fact that red rags were used, rags which could not be used for making the ordinary paper pa-per as the .color could not be removed. re-moved. Here was a method for using the apparently useless matter, and so for a long time pink was the predominant predom-inant color. |