The Chinese first made paper about 2, 000 years ago. China still has pieces of paper which were made as long ago as that. But Chinese paper was not made from the wood of trees. It was made from the hair一 -like parts of certain plants.
Paper was not made in southern Europe until about the year 1100. Scandinavia(斯堪的纳维亚半岛), which now makes a great deal of the world's paper, did not begin to make it until 1500. It was a German named Schaeffer who found out that one could make the best paper from trees. After that, the forest countries of Sweden, Norway, Finland, and the United States became the largest paper producers. Today in Finland, which makes the best paper in the world, the paper industry is the biggest on land. New paper-making machines are very big, and they make paper very fast. The biggest machines can make a piece of paper 300 metres long and 6 metres wide in one minute.
When we think of paper, we think of newspapers, books, letters, envelopes and writing paper. But there are many other uses. Only half of the paper that is made is used for books and newspapers, etc.
