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Paper was not invented by the Italians, but by the Orientals, but its manufacture was greatly developed and improved by them and furnished an extremely important adjuvent for the art of printing. Fabriano of Anoona made excellent paper early in the fourteenth century and the extant manuscripts on Italian paper from that period excite admiration for its good quality even in our day. Most of the North Italian cities took up the manufacture of paper about this time and their product became famous all over Europe. It was they who developed the making of rag paper and also linen paper. About the middle of the fourteenth century the use of paper for all literary purposes became well established in Italy and gradually spread all over Europe.

What needs to be well recognized, however, is the fact that Italy’s inventions were not limited in any way to merely material things. There are many inventions which represent shortcuts of various kinds for the accomplishment of mental processes and in facilities of this kind the practical genius of the Italians has been particularly fruitful. It was they who invented the various processes in arithmetic that have so simplified calculations. It is to them also that we owe as is made clear in the chapters on Mathematics and Astronomy the algebraic solutions of equations of various kinds that had seemed impossible or could be done only by long time taking guess-work before the Italian mind ordered them.