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Show 0 O , O I p7 Fiftieth Anniversary of the 1A17 1 imi 1 Wood Pulp Industry iSU I Sr-rwri $ ; fa FIRST WOOD PULP MILL IN AMERICA 1867. MARCH Hth will record an anniversary anni-versary of peculiar interest to newspaper publishers of this country, for on this date fifty years ago. in I8ti7, the first ground wood pulp was made nt a mill In what was then the villaee of Curtlsvllle. recently renamed re-named Interlaken, In the State of Mas-acbuaetts. Mas-acbuaetts. Dp to that lime paper was made exclusively of rags, naturally limiting lim-iting the amount produced; but with the successful conversion of wood into a Bbre suitable for print paper the vast timber resources of this continent became be-came the limitless reservoir of raw material ma-terial for any and all future demand. 6olved Another Difficulty. But the wood pulp fibre also solved ftimtlier difficulty for the printer, for theretofore the speed of printing press-m press-m w as limited, caused by the slow drying dry-ing of the inks on paper made of rags, whilp the trade soon discovered that paper made of ground wood had excellent excel-lent absorbing and drying qualities, and OOu thereafter the printing press man-ufact man-ufact i re re were putting their minds and iier'ii-s to work to develop the blub peed press, und now the modern double octuple press will print 72,000 1" page papers per hour. America's First Mill. The Idea of making paper from wood originated in Germany in the early forties with Gottfried Keller, tradition JUrigg U Lnat ho in turn received hla $ Inspiration from a wasps' nest Keller collaborated with a manufacturer of machinery, Heinrich Voelter, in whose name the patents were executed. It was not until 1SH6 that the possibilities possibili-ties of this invention in this country-were country-were recognized, when Albrecht and Rudolf Pagenstecher induced their cousin Alberto Pagcnsteeher to build a mill in this country, and financed the purchase of the necessary machinery and the building of a mill. The choit s of location fell to Curtlsvllle, where the outlet of Stockbridge Bowl seemed to supply tin adequate amount of power pow-er The mill was built and on March rth. 18fi7. the first ground wood pulp wag produced. Wellington Smith, Pioneer. Then another difficulty arose, namely the selling of the product Paper man-ufaeturers man-ufaeturers were either strongly opposed op-posed to or extremely pessimistic of the papermaklng qualities of wood fibre When one very large manufacturer manufac-turer was approached he curtly answered an-swered "Sir, we dn t uso shoddy." Finally, however, Wellington Smith, who owned a mill near Curtlsvllle, at Lee. agreed to buy a lot as an eiperl meut. and to Wellington Smith la due the credit of having made the first paper pa-per out of wood pulp. This pulp was invoiced at eight cent a pound, while the normal price today of puip la under one cent per pounJ, and news print paper, then selling at fourteen four-teen cents a pound was reduced to two cents. It Is furthermore remarkable that In the fifty Intervening yearn no substantial chango In the manufacture of ground wood pulp has been made, although the improvement In details of the grimier has naturally Increased Its efficiency and production. Cradle of an Industry. Once the practicability of this new fibre had been demonstrated, the Interest In-terest in It became general and the Industry In-dustry developed by leaps and bonnds. The Pagenste hers, of whom Albrecht Pagenstecher is the sole surviving member and still largely interested In many paper-mill enterprises, lmmedi ntely built a second and somewhat larger mill nt Luzerne. N. T., and in lsi.'j acquired the water power at Palmer Falls, where they built what was to be fur many years and is today, to-day, with but one exception, the largest larg-est mill in this country. Little remains of the Curtlsville plant. The power was soon found to bo totally inadequate, and the mill was eventually dismantled. But motorists mo-torists traveling from Stockbridge to Lenox can still see, when passing through Interlaken. a square pile of stone on the right band, all that ro-mains ro-mains of the cradle of an industry destined des-tined to become not only one of the largest but also one of the most Important Im-portant in this country. |
