Fred Durrance, age 14, of Albuquerque, N.M., for his question:
WHO FIRST USED WALLPAPER?
Wallpaper is decorative paper used to cover inside walls. Historians tell us that it was probably made for the first time in either England, France or The Netherlands during the 1500s.
Wallpaper developed when artists designed patterns that could be put on paper and used as cheaper substitutes for the expensive woven wall hangings called tapestries. Tapestries had been favorite wall decorations for European palaces for centuries.
Craftsmen painted designs on the paper by hand or printed them from carved blocks of wood.
In the early 1600s, the Chinese started to make wallpaper. They did many wood blocks of birds, flowers and landscapes. The Chinese wallpaper was printed on rice paper.
In the 1700s, the French started decorating their wallpaper with Chinese objects and patterns. This extremely popular style became known as chinoiserie.
The first wallpaper produced in the United States was made in Philadelphia in 1739. During the 1800s, favorite American designs included landscapes, the architectural ruins of ancient Greece and scenes from American life.
A vinyl substance was put into wallpaper by the B.F. Goodrich Chemical Company in 1947 and the result was a washable, vinyl covered wall covering. Then a pre pasted paper, which stuck to a wall when the paper was moistened with water, was developed in the 1950s.
In 1975, Great Britain's largest chemical company, Imperial Chemical Industries, developed wallpaper made of a type of plastics called polyethylene. This paper is easy to hang because special dripless paste is brushed directly onto the wall instead of onto the paper.
Most wallpaper today is made from softwoods, such as hemlock and spruce. Machines slice the wood into chips and the chips are then cooked in a chemical solution until they form a soft mass called sulfate pulp.
This mixture then goes through the same processes used in the manufacture of most other paper.
Manufacturers sell most wallpaper in rolls of sheets that measure about 30 feet long and two and a quarter feet wide.
Wallpaper is used by most people to make a room look more attractive. But it also has other practical advantages: it can hide plaster cracks, stains and other flaws on walls.
Wallpaper is printed by a process called gravure. This process is also used to print wallpaper made of such woven fabrics as burlap and linen.
After being printed by a manufacturer, the wallpaper is put on racks to dry. Finally it is measured into sheets, cut, wound into rolls and finally packed for shipment.
Many types of wallpaper are especially easy to care for and are ideal for such areas as kitchens and children's playrooms.
Many apartment dwellers and people who frequently redecorate, use a special kind of wall covering called strippable wallpaper. It can be peeled off easily without damaging the wall.