From plant to notebook

Back in ancient times people first wrote on slabs of stone, clay, wood or pieces of ivory. Imagine having to carry around a note book made up of slabs of stone!!! It certainly wasn't very practical, and man searched for something that would be easier to handle.
The ancient Egyptians invented a method of making strips of reed into a writing material called papyrus. From papyrus we get the word paper. The papyrus sheets were glued together in a long strip and then rolled into a scroll around a stick of wood or ivory. These scrolls were the first books.
The ancient Romans used the inner bark of a tree to write on. Later on, particularly in the Middle Ages, a material called parchment was used .
Parchment was made from sheepskin or other animal skin.
In the second century A.D., the Chinese produced the first paper. They took the bark of a tree and some cloth fibers and mixed them with water. The mixture was then spread on a piece of cloth. When it dried, it became a sheet of paper. The Chinese method of paper making spread to Japan and Korea and than to Arabia. It probably reached Europe sometime in the 12th century.
For a long time cloth fibers were used to make paper. But since the 19th century wood pulp has been the main raw material.