OK, Make that "Six Inventions That Changed the World"

A couple of years ago, I wrote about five inventions that changed the world. I had forgotten about that post until I saw it as a result on a search on my stats thingamabob.[1] I was astonished/abashed to realize one that I had left off.

The paper machine.

The concept of a machine that made paper continuously was dreamed up and patented by a Frenchman named Louis-Nicholas Robert in 1799. France wasn't very stable then, so Robert's boss sent the design to his brother-in-law, an Englishman. The Fourdrinier brothers (Henry and Sealy) in London owned a stationary firm, they improved the design enough to warrant a British patent and built the first few paper machines. Virtually every paper machine running in the world today is a direct descendant of the Fourdrinier Machine.

Building the first few paper machines cost the Fourdriniers' over 60,000 pounds, an enormous sum at the time, when workers were paid about 12 to 25 pounds a year. Henry Fourdrinier went bankrupt and the design was widely pirated.

The Fourdrinier Machine, by mass-producing cheap wood-pulp-based paper, made possible the wide dissemination of information. The availability of cheap paper led to inventions of faster ways to print and the Gutenberg-style manual printing press gave way to the rotary printing press which, when powered by a steam engine, could churn out millions of pages of print per press each day. News and information became available to anyone who could read and, coupled with the proliferation of public libraries[2], information was no longer the province of the elite.

All because of cheap paper.

[1] I'm closing in on 5,000 posts in the span of 32 months. Cut me some slack.
[2] Public libraries?!! zOMG!!!1!! Socialism!!