Long ago, the eunuch Ts’ai Lun, counsellor to the Emperor of China, annoyed that his bamboo tablet stubbornly resisted the ink on his brush, stormed from his veranda into a palace courtyard, where a stout washer-woman with a large paddle had just finished pummelling a quantity of soiled clothing in a wooden tub of water.
Ts’ai Lun paused to compose himself beside the tub, musing on how threadbare his robes and linen trousers had become recently, when he suddenly realized the leftover water in the tub was completely obscured by a floating layer of cloth fibres. Ts’ai Lun stared
