William later owned and ran Hurstbourne Priors Mill in Hampshire, from 1831 until his death in 1845.) John Slade ran East Hagbourne Mill (from 1824 to 1845) and lived in Aston at Croft House, (only from 1845) He had a paper mill called Hagbourne Mill (sic), (not so, all the data points to the fact that his brother, William Smart Slade, owned the mill and John ran it whilst his brother was running Upper Clatford Mill, Andover, Hants, from 1817 to 1831. “Blotting paper was first made by John Slade (1797-1862), youngest brother of William Smart Slade. This appears to have been abstracted from the entry on East Hagboume in the Victorian County History of Berkshire, 1906). (Dr J W Walker – article in the Reading Mercury 7th Jan 1932 “The History of North Berkshire”. The paper immediately acquired the same absorbent qualities of unsized paper, which were quickly recognised by Slade.(William Russell Slade (1766-1801).” (Presumably, the incident took place at the same period as the story above). “A workman at the East Hagbourne Mill accidentally spilled sulphuric acid on a batch of finished paper, thus negating the properties of the paper sizing. (Philip Tyson Woodcock, (great great grandson of William Russell Slade, Managing Director T B Ford Ltd, “The History of T B Ford Ltd 1960”, unpublished).ĭr J W Walker relates an alternative story. He instructed that it should be packed, labelled and sold as blotting paper- the first time in history that blotting paper had been made and sold as a commercial product. “Grasping the commercial possibilities of the workman’s mistake, Slade stopped the repulping of the faulty batch of paper. The Excise Officer pointed this out to William Slade, (William Russell Slade (1766-1801), who quickly realised that this paper would absorb surplus ink from the surface of a properly sized piece of paper which had been written upon.” Later, when the Excise Officer wrote on the paper, the ink was immediately absorbed in all directions, producing a feathering effect. “During the 1780s or 1790s, a beaterman or apprentice at the East Hagbourne Mill omitted to add size to the paper stock, one day, and the finished paper was consequently rejected.
0 kommentar(er)
