A ream of paper *

Some historians believe that the people in Fabriano en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabriano learned paper-making in the eleventh century, when Arabs, attacking the nearby city of Ancona , taught it to them. Possible evidence supporting this theory is the fact that some Arab papermaking terms were used in Fabriano. These include the Fabriano word for rag paper 'cuctunea,' which comes from the Arab word, 'quothon.' That word is also the origin of the Italian word 'cotone,' which means "cotton", but this is the mistranslation because the Arabs never made paper from cotton and the Italian didn't do so either until the eighteenth century. The Fabrianese were also the first Europeans to call the bundles into which they divided their paper 'risma,' which comes from the Arabic 'razmah,' and is translated into English as "ream." The amount contained in a ream, but not the term itself, has slightly changed over times. Today's paper is still counted in reams; a ream is five hundred sheets.

The earliest verifiable record of papermaking in Italy is document that dates from 1264. It records a merchant's purchase of paper from Fabriano, and since it does not say anything about this being a new business or the first time this was done, it can be logically assumed that paper was produced in the city for some time prior to 1264 ~ Page 79

// World consumption of paper has doubled since 1980, with each resident of the USA consuming the equivalent of 5.57 forty-foot trees in 2910. That is to say, the average American gets through almost 500 pounds of paper a year. In Belgium, whose capital, Brussels, is the bureaucratic seat of the European Union, that figure rises to more than 750 pounds per capita; in India, on the other hand, it drops to scarcely more than 20. In the age of email, websites, and e-books, our dependence on paper has grown, not lessened. ~ Page 35 Excerpt: "The Book" - Kith Houston