Tammy Bird, age 10, of Junction City, Oregon, for her question:

Who invented paper?

Paper gets its name from the reedy papyrus plant that thrives along the banks of the muddy Nile. The peoples of ancient Egypt dried and glued it in strips to make long rolls of Papyrus writing paper. But our kind of paper was not invented in Egypt. Most experts agree that it was invented in China, almost 19 centuries ago. According to the Chinese, the first modern paper was made in the year 105 A.D.

At that time, the Emperor Ho Ti's Minister of Public Words was Ts'an Lun. And Ts'an Lun thought that there must be better things to write on than silk or flattened bamboo. So he set about finding them. He shredded mulberry bark into fibers and matted them down to make flat pages. This was the first real paper. But the Chinese improved it and later made fine, smooth papers from rags, twine, hemp and matted shreds of rice. Several centuries later the Arabs learned the secret from the Chinese and paper making spread through Europe and Asia.