Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 October 1891 — Eighteen Hundred to an Inch. [ARTICLE]

Eighteen Hundred to an Inch.

It will not, perhaps, be remembered that in the great exhibition of 1851 a specimen erf iron paper was exhibited. Immediately a lively competition ensued among iron-masters as to the thinness to which iron could be rolled. / One ironmaker rolled sheets the average thickness of which was the 1-1800 part of an inch. In other words, 1,800 sheets of this iron, piled one upon the other, would only measure one inch in thickness. The wonderful fineness of this work may he more readily understood when it is remembered that 1,200 sheets of thinnest tissue paper measure a fraction over an inch. These wonderful iron sheets were perfectly smooth and easy to write upon, notwithstanding the fact that they were porous when held up in a strong light.—London Paper Maker,