Introduction and the Origin of Paper

     Goa, India was a new, growing city in the sixteenth century. Understandably, the story of the printing press in Goa is not centered around innovation regarding the press itself. Rather, it is centered around the innovation in ideas the books printed gave to the expanding region. So, knowing that the region of Goa will not offer me the most extensive history of printing presses in general, I thought it would be useful to look back in time and find the origins of the printing press first. From gathering this knowledge, a clearer picture would be painted allowing me to see how a printing press first ended up in Goa.
    In China, sometime during the third century, paper was first created out of “mulberry bark, hemp, and rags” (Suarez, Woudhuysen 131). Due to its easy production procedures, paper became more popular and replaced the remaining competition. Its primary purpose back in third-century China was to be used to write documents. The use of paper stayed steady in the east in the following centuries, but it took some time before this innovation reached the west.
    The first known paper mills in Europe were set up in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a millennium after paper was first created. It is still uncertain as to when the technology from the east made its way over between the third and thirteenth centuries. (Suarez, Woudhuysen 131).

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