19 century pulp and paper industry — New machinery

Sandy Hill Iron and Brass Works was preparing to manufacture new machinery to be used in paper mills and bag mills to remove fiber from jute.

John M. Holmes of Pine Street in Glens Falls designed and patented the machinery.

“This is the third machine of this character which he has patented,” The Morning Star of Glens Falls reported on Feb. 15, 1895. “The fiber is disintegrated by a process of beating the jute in a cylinder within which beaters revolve.”

In other 19th century pulp and paper industry news collected from historic newspapers of the region:

• “Norman Bly has sold one-half interest in his patent pulp machine to Hon. Mr. Younglove, formerly member of the Assembly, of Cohoes,” the Crown Point Center correspondent reported in the Ticonderoga Sentinel on Feb. 21, 1879.
• “The paper mill company has a large number of teams drawing pulp to the mills at Fort Edward and returning with sulfite,” the South Glens Falls reported in The Morning Star on Feb. 16, 1895.
• “The J. L. Dix Foundry Company yesterday shipped a carload of power transmitting machinery to the mills of the Moose River Lumber Company at McKeever, Herkimer County,” The Morning Star reported Feb. 20, 1895.
• “The Glens Falls Paper Company receives ten carloads of pulp wood daily,” The Morning Star reported on April 3, 1895.
• “The Cain’s Falls pulp mill is doing a good business now with the increase of water and their largely improved machinery,” the Fort Ann correspondent reported in The Granville Sentinel on April 5, 1895. “About two carloads per day are being shipped from this station.”
• “Henry Lee, who has the contract for doing brick work at the new wallpaper mill at Bakers Falls, has forty-five men in his employ, among them twenty-five masons,” The Morning Star reported on April 8, 1895. “Upward of 200,000 bricks were laid in five days last week.”
• “Last Friday a great feat was accomplished at the Glens Falls Paper Company’s mill. In twenty-four hours, forty tons and fourteen hundred and thirty-two pounds of print paper was made by four machines. … This entire record, the people at the mill say, is probably unequaled,” The Morning Star reported on May 13, 1889.
• “The Hudson River Pulp and Paper Company were putting seven piers under the railroad trestle that leads to their mill,” the Corinth correspondent reported in The Morning Star on May 25, 1895.
• “Our paper mill is said to have the fastest paper machine in the world,” the Fort Edward correspondent reported in The Morning Star on May 25, 1895. “The machine in question is now running off 400 feet of paper, seventy-three inches wide, per minute. Paper makers from all section of the country have been here to see the machine.”

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