Charles Fenerty, was a Canadian inventor who invented the wood pulp process for papermaking, which was first adapted into the production of newsprint. Fenerty was also a poet.
Early life
Fenerty was born in Upper Falmouth, Nova Scotia. He was the youngest of three boys, all of whom worked for their father, a lumberman and farmer. During the winter months, the Fenertys would clear-cutthe local forests for lumber, which they then transported to the family's lumber mill at Springfield Lake. The Fenertys shipped their lumber to the Halifax dockyards, where it was exported or used locally. The Fenertys had around of farmland; they shipped most of their produce to the markets in Halifax. As a young man, Fenerty began writing poetry; his first poem, written when he was 17 years old, was titled "The Prince's Lodge". It described an abandoned, decaying home overlooking the Bedford Basin near Halifax. The lodge had been built decades prior by Prince Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, who later returned to England.
Invention of paper from wood pulp
Each time Fenerty hauled lumber and produce to Halifax, he would pass the local paper mills, and sometimes stopped by to watch the process, since there were many similarities between lumber and paper mills. In those days paper was made from pulped rags, cotton and other plant fibres, a technique used for nearly 2000 years. Demand for paper was outstripping the supply of rags, and Europe starting cutting down their shipments of cotton to North America. Fenerty had learned that trees have fibres too, through discussions with the naturalistTitus Smith. At the age of 17 he began his experiments of making paper from wood. By 1844, he had perfected the process. In a letter written by a family member circa 1915 it is mentioned that Charles Fenerty had shown a crude sample of his paper to a friend named Charles Hamilton in 1840, though the family member in question would have been around 8 at the time. On 26 October 1844 Charles Fenerty took a sample of his paper to Halifax's top newspaper, the Acadian Recorder, where he had written a letter on his newly invented paper saying: Other inventors had used wood to make paper; in the 18th century a French scientist by the name of René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur suggested that paper could be made from trees. His theory caught the interest of Matthias Koops, who in 1800 experimented with papermaking by compressing and adhering straw and wood shavings. In about 1838 German weaver Friedrich Gottlob Keller read Réaumur's report. Unaware of Fenerty across the ocean, he experimented for a few years and, in 1845, a year after Fenerty's letter to the newspaper, filed for a patent in Germany for the ground wood pulp process for making modern paper. In that same year Henry Voelter bought the patent for about five hundred dollars and started making paper. His venture wasn't financially successful, and he later was unable to afford to renew his patent. Voelter has been credited in Germany as the first to make paper from wood pulp.
Poetry and travel
Fenerty was also a well-known poet of his time, publishing more than 35 poems. Some of the better known titles were: "Betula Nigra", "Essay on Progress", and "The Prince's Lodge". In October 1854, he won first prize for "Betula Nigra" at the Nova Scotia Industrial Exhibition. Fenerty did extensive travelling throughout Australia between the years 1858 to 1865, living through the Australian gold rushes, and then returned to Halifax. He became involved with the Church and held several positions in Halifax: Wood Measurer, Census Taker, Health Warden, Tax Collector for his community, and Overseer of the Poor.
Death and legacy
Little attention was given to Fenerty's invention, and he himself never developed his process or took out a patent on it. It did mark the beginning to a new industry; today most people attribute F. G. Keller as the original inventor. Pulped wood paper slowly began to be adopted by paper mills. German newspapers were the first to adopt the new paper, then other newspapers made the switch from rags to wood pulp. Soon there were mills throughout Canada, the U.S., and Europe, and later the rest of the world. A wood pulp paper mill was erected near Fenerty's home town. By the end of the 19th century almost all newspapers in the western world were using pulp wood newsprint. Fenerty died on 10 June 1892 in his home in Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia, from a flu.
