Search

The printing press helped to spread literacy, civic discourse, and even political dissent in colonial America. Without paper, however, the invention of the moveable type printing press would have been insignificant. This crucial communication medium was hobbled by a critical shortage of the raw material needed for printed matter. Paper was in short supply in the colonies and in the new nation as it could only be made from rags, and there was constant difficulty in obtaining enough rags to keep the presses rolling. Pleas for this essential ingredient were constantly seen in the newspapers in early America and there were severe shortages of both paper and the rags from which it was made during the American Revolution. This article examines how desperate were the early Americans for the paper which was necessary both for firing the muskets and for spreading the rhetoric of Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper is a review of bibliographical publications relating to transparent papers during the period 1960 to 1999. Emphasis is placed on conservation treatments. An introductory chapter covering the history and technology of these papers is followed by a description of types of degradation frequently encountered and a short paragraph dedicated to analysis. Subsequent chapters discuss conservation treatments, including dry cleaning, humidification and flattening, washing and deacidification, lining, local repairs, resizing, facing, solvent use and bleaching. A discussion of housing and storage methods completes the review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author reconstructs the data on Virginia's paper money regime using forensic accounting techniques. He corrects the existing data on the amounts authorized and outstanding, and reconstructs yearly data on previously unknown aspects of Virginia's paper money regime, including printings, net new emissions, redemptions and removals, denominational structures, expected redemption tax revenues, and specie accumulating in the treasury for paper money redemption. These new data form the foundation for narratives written on the social, economic, and political history of Virginia, as well as for testing models of colonial paper money performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reads Salvador Plascencia's The People of Paper (2005) in dialogue with Édouard Glissant's concept of "opacity", an ethical and esthetic stance that values impeding comprehension. This novel's opacity arises from various limiting mechanisms – linguistic, translational, and formal – which both invite and inhibit interpretation, and in so doing open up a space in which readers can think with the text. Bringing The People of Paper and Glissant's thought together shows how Plascencia's text thickens and complicates readerly engagement, and so increases the esthetic purchase of the novel. The People of Paper both invites and deflects the idea that esthetic experience might offer a route to understanding the social or that it provides the foundation of a more ethical relation with others. In parallel, Plascencia's innovative use of the page and his invocation of an intertextual history of such innovation expands the scope of Glissant's theory, by incorporating the physical medium of the book and the workings of genre history as components of an opaque poetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As journalists from around the world descended on the South during the civil rights movement, the local southern press served largely as an ally to segregationists and the campaign for massive resistance to integration. Despite the best efforts of pro-segregation propagandists, the visiting press often presented perspectives and realities deemed a threat to the “southern way of life.” In response, outside journalists and news organizations became the targets of segregationist backlash, including sustained editorial attacks from within the southern press aimed at their alleged integrationist anti-southern agendas, affiliations, and motives. As outside journalists repeatedly experienced intimidation, ridicule, and even violence while covering the movement, southern editorials cultivated and fanned the flames of this already hostile environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forensic accounting is used to reconstruct the data on emissions, redemptions, and bills outstanding for colonial New Jersey paper money. These components are further separated into the amounts initially legislated and the amounts actually executed. These data are substantial improvements over what currently exists in the literature. They also provide a more complete and nuanced accounting of colonial New Jersey's paper money regime than what has been done previously for any British North American colony. Enough detail of the forensic accounting exercise is given for scholars to reproduce the data series from the original sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigating the stories behind the makers of 3D models of crystals has proved unexpectedly unstraightforward. Drawing on actor-network theory (ANT), this article investigates the references behind a set of models of mineralogical crystals made of pasteboard held by National Museums Scotland (NMS), to uncover the history and tradition of such models and the role that pedagogy plays in their stories. The contributions of many of the main actors have been neglected, dismissed, ignored, forgotten, or otherwise rendered invisible in the historical record, either intentionally or accidentally. It became clear, however, that there was a significant tradition of modelling in paper, from the earliest years of learning, play and education. Many more people than those intending to become professional model makers were capable of making paper models of subjects from the crystals found in rocks, to buildings made of them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Between 1789 and 1803 the National Debt Office issued unbacked interest bearing notes whereas the Bank of Sweden issued silver backed notes. The massive note issuance by the National Debt Office led to different exchange rates and two units of account. The situation gave rise to an early paper standard theory formulated by Anders Wappengren, a well-read merchant who was strongly influenced by Adam Smith and the French physiocrats. Wappengren had a firm understanding of monetary systems and the adjustment mechanism under floating exchange rates, including such concepts as purchasing power parity and price stickiness. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the first four or five centuries of its manufacturing in Europe, paper was neither cheap nor available in unlimited quantities. Old rags, the primary material from which the paper was exclusively made, were a strategic commodity and trade with them was strictly regulated. Owing to their perpetual scarcity, as well as to the overall laboriousness of the papermaking process, a skilled master printer of the Incunabula period was hardly able to purchase a ream or two of high-quality paper for his monthly earnings. Consequently, the earliest printers had to rely on the support of ‘venture capitalists’ in order to secure steady supplies of paper. But the limitations of its manufacturing were not resolved by the end of the Incunabula period. Alas, the shortage and high cost of paper accompanied the development of print in Italy and elsewhere practically up until the advent of its industrial production from wooden pulp in the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study offers a historical overview of U.S. paper money before and after its nationalization in 1861, drawing attention to its function as a medium of mass communication. Building upon recent scholarship concerning the social construction of money and national currencies, it is argued that U.S. currency is legitimated through visual strategies of rationalization and mystification, whereby the contractual obligations of the state are merged with the sacred bonds of national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]