ABSTRACT
The chief cause of the reduction in the price of newspaper is the successful use, first of straw, and wood pulp, as ingredients of manufacture. Paper made from wood pulp had been considered as a possibility in the early and mid-nineteenth century. During the Civil War paper prices rose even faster in the United States, as a general inflation and the increased demands of the Washington bureaucracy made the shortage of paper more severe. Three major methods of manufacturing pulp for paper were used. The first was mechanical pulping, which involved simply grinding the wood under pressure. Usually the mechanical pulp process was used in conjunction with a soda-ash reduction method which provided a better grade of paper. Finally, in the 1880’s, using a process invented by Benjamin Tilghman, a Civil War general and chemist of some renown, the sulfite method which reduced the fiber content of the wood with a chemical process came into being.
