Cai Lun

Cai Lun (traditional characters: 蔡倫; simplified characters: 蔡伦; Pinyin: Cài Lún; transcription Wade: Ts' have Lun), (v. 50 - 121), whose social Prénom was Jìngzhòng (敬仲), was a Eunuque senior official of the Chinese imperial court during the dynasty of the Eastern Han.

Cai is a famous character of the Chinese history because one allots to him, by tradition, the invention of the Papier, or at least the improvement of his technique of manufacture. It would have had the idea, in year 105, to replace the old supports of the writing, i.e. the shelves of bamboo and silk, by a paper carried out starting from a paste containing bark of trees (in particular of mulberry tree), of flax and hemp.

Archeology comes to contradict this tradition. Paper fragments resulting from vegetable fibers definitely former at the time of Cai Lun were found in certain a number of the Chinese sites, oldest dating from or the beginning of.

Within sight of the very low number of old paper documents arrived to us, one can affirm that Cai Lun had a determining role from a technical point of view, neither from the point of view of a more massive production, nor even as its time saw the imperial administration being suddenly put to use paper more usually.

The Chinese imperial capacity took part to forge the legend of Cai Lun (by the means of an official biography), resulting in making of it a kind of divinity of the paper makers. A temple in its honor would have been set up with Chengdu during the Dynastie Song (960-1279).

In the current Chinese general public, Cai Lun personifies the role of China in the rise of the industry of paper.

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