Did someone just start shaving a tree and had a sudden flash of brilliance that they could write on it?
I don’t know who the specific inventor of paper was. I do know that it originated in China and spread westward. I can’t remember when it was developed.
Egyptians or Chinese did.
Probably someone found out they could write on pieces of wood with charcoal. Then decided to use thinner and thinner pieces of wood until someone came up with the idea of mashing cellulose together into a solution and letting it dry until you got a paper thin “piece”.
Egyptian’s first paper was called papyrus. I think the Chinese also used bamboo pieces.
Apparently the Chinese did it…
Simulpost!
Just read that link, but also remember from grade school that Egyptians had something to do with the invention of paper, probably independently, whereas that link does not mention them at all.
The Egyptians did indeed invent papyrus a lot earlier (around 4000 BC). But it’s not quite what you’d call paper.
This link describes the production method, as it was reinvented in the 20th century. When paper was introduced, the labour intensive papyrus could not compete, and both the know-how and the papyrus plant dissapeared from Egypt, until it was re-introduced in 1969.
Having recently discovered that the Chinese were first up with marijuana, it logically follows that they invented the spliff. 
Ts’ai Lun did. The invention of paper was a fundamental step towards the information age. Paper brought information storage to the common man. Prior storage mediums like papyrus or stone slates were expensive and difficult to manufacture and use. Paper was even more key to mass information storage and distribution than the printing press.
I’m so impressed with this accomplishment that I bought the tsailun.com domain many years ago, thinking I might build a company around it some day.
Ok, I feel like we are oversimplifying things here (at least in terms of Europe-- I don’t know what the Chinese situation was like, except that it was primarily scribal culture with a bit of block printing (the Koreans seem to have used a kind of movable type very briefly, but it didn’t catch on well in China, from what I recall). We need to separate the information technology of writing stuff on small bits of something from the medium of paper itself. As said, the Chinese had something that was cloest to what we would call paper properly way back. The Egyptians had papyrus ‘paper’ (where the word comes from), which was also used by the Greeks, I belive, and the Europeans for a long time afterward were using parchment/vellum because papyrus was too expensive to import (however, papyrus was not expensive to manufacture or acquire in places where papyrus plants grew. . .). Wax tablets were also popular for making notations in classical times, and the medieval europeans had all sorts of ways of making notations and documents, not all of them what we would consider ‘literate’ (wax stamps, rods of wood with notches cut into them for accounting, etc.). Then in the early 15th c what we call paper arrived from China, which was much easier and cheaper to produce (although not as simple as it is now-- in Europe they were still using cloth rags instead of wood pulp like we do now (of course cloth paper holds up much better. . .)).
Yes, the press was not really practical until paper arrived (what could you mass produce onto?), but all the information technological issues of scribal culture had already developed in Europe long before paper arrived, and this did not change until the press developed. Paper itself did not enable mass reproduction-- you can only hand-write so fast-- but offered a cheaper medium which could be used paired with the other piece of new technology. Much of what we consider important in info storage and ease of retrieval (table of contents, standardized pagination, indexing, the assumption that my copy looks just like your copy) is a product of the printing age.
We could also discuss the rise in literacy rates in Europe in the late 14th century as creating a demand for information which had not previously existed. But we won’t.
I think as much as the press was a quantum leap, paper was a quantum leap.
Yes, mediums existed before paper, but they were considerably more difficult to manufacture, and therefore considerably more expensive. The existance of paper as a cheap information storage and distribution medium didn’t just make it more cost effective for existing readers and writers. It enabled people who before were not readers or writers to become so. It brought information storage and transfer to the common man.
Similar to the press. Pre-press, kings were able to print using manual labor. Sure, the press dramatically reduced the printing cost. But the value wasn’t the cost reductions enjoyed by kings. The value was that people who before were not able to do large printing projects now were able to.
I believe you have the cart before the horse. I argue that a cost-effective reading/writing medium was the cause for the rise in literacy rates. Likewise, the invention of the press caused another rise.
I propose that both inventions were truly revolutionary, truly quantum leaps towards the information age.
Also…
I disagree; having made papyrus and paper, I can tell you that paper is considerably easier. Here’s how it’s done:
Papyrus
Remove outer bark of papyrus plant
Slice inner pith into thin strips
Hammer to break the fibers and drain the water
Immerse in water for 3 days until the fibers become flexible and transparent
Cut to length
Place on a piece of cotten each at a slight overlap making two layers (one horizontal, one vertical)
Put between two pieces of cardboard
Place under a hand press to be squeezed
Leave in sun until dry, changing cardboard every 8 hours
Drying process takes about 3-4 days
Paper
Boil rags (or fibres of plants)
Beat them into mash
Spread on a strainging frame
Press with a heavy weight