Another fascinating piece from the New Yorker: Why Paper Jams Persist
Joshua Rothman notes:
“Jams emerge from an elemental struggle between the natural
and the mechanical. “Paper isn’t manufactured—it’s processed,” Warner said, as
we ambled among the copiers in a vast Xerox showroom with Ruiz and a few other
engineers. “It comes from living things—trees—which are unique, just like
people are unique.” In Spain, paper is made from eucalyptus; in Kentucky, from
Southern pine; in the Northwest, from Douglas fir. To transform these trees
into copy paper, you must first turn them into wood chips, which are then
mashed into pulp. The pulp is bleached, and run through screens and chemical
processes that remove biological gunk until only water and wood fibre remain.
In building-size paper mills, the fibre is sprayed onto rollers turning
thirty-five miles per hour, which press it into fat cylinders of paper forty
reams wide. It doesn’t take much to reverse this process. When paper gets too
wet, it liquefies; when it gets too dry, it crumbles to dust….