Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 December 1896 — A Marvelous Indian Paper. [ARTICLE]

A Marvelous Indian Paper.

-The marvelous Oxford Indian paper was first Introduced in 1875. Since then, says the Paper World, It has revolutionized the Bible and prayer book trade, and it is now used for all the more popular devotional books throughout the wbrld. In the year 1841, an Oxford graduate is said to have brought home from the far East a small fold of extremely thin paper, wh'ich was manifestly more opaque and tough for Its substance than any paper then in Europe. He presented It to the Clarendon Press. The late Thomas Combe, who had only recently been appointed printer to the university, found it to be just sufficient for twenty-four copies of the smallest Bible then in existence—diamond 24mo—and printed an edition of that number, which bore the date of 1842. These books were barely a third of the usual thickness, and, although as much as ?100 apiece was offered for them, no copies were sold, and they

were presented to the queen and other distinguished persons. All efforts to trace the paper to its source were futile, and as years rolled on the circumstance was forgotten. But early in 1874 a copy fell into the hands of Arthur E. Miles, who showed it to Mr. Frowe, and experiments were at once set on foot at the Oxford University paper mills with the object of producing a similar paper. The first attempts were failures, but success was achieved, and Aug. 24, 1875, an edition of the diamond 24m0 Bible, similar in all respects to the twenty-four copies printed in 1842, was placed on sale. This was the first Oxford Bible published by Mr. Frowe.’ The feat of compression was looked upon as astounding, the demand was enormous, and before very long a quarter of a million copies had been sold. The paper, when subjected to severe rubbing, instead of breaking into holes, assumed a texture resembling chamois leather, and a strip only three Inches wide was found able to support a quarter of a hundredweight without yielding. The secret of its manufacture, it may be said, is known to only three living beings.