The manufacture of paper from linen rags became general in France, Italy, and Spain in the fourteenth century; the first German paper-mill was established at Nuremberg in 1390. English manuscripts on linen paper date as early as 1340; but it is believed that the manufacture did not exist in England until the end of the fifteenth century, when the _Bartolomæus_ of Wynkyn de Worde appeared (1496), in which it is stated that paper of a superior kind was made for that work by John Tate, Jr., at his mills in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. In 1588, a German named Spielman, jeweller to Queen Elizabeth, established a paper-mill at Dartford. In 1770, the manufacture of fine paper was established at Maidstone, in Kent, by a celebrated maker, J. Whatman, who had worked as journeyman in some of the principal paper-mills on the Continent. Not long before this, _wove_ moulds had been invented by Baskerville to obviate the usual roughness of _laid_ paper, and these, attracting attention in France, led to the improvements which characterized the vellum paper of that period. Holland, too, contributed its share to the advancement of this manufacture, by inventing cylinders with steel blades for tearing the rags, and thus facilitating their conversion into pulp, which, by the old method of stampers only, was a very slow and defective process. In 1799, the first attempt to produce paper in an endless web was made in France by a workman in the employ of M. Didot. The invention was brought to England by M. Didot, in 1801, and made the subject of patents, which, in 1804, were assigned to the Messrs. Fourdrinier. Mr. Bryan Donkin, the engineer, carried out the desired plans, and produced, after intense application, a self-acting machine or working model, on an improved plan, of which he afterwards constructed many others for home use and for exportation, which were perfectly successful in the manufacture of continuous paper. In 1809, Mr. Dickinson, the celebrated paper-maker invented another method of making endless paper, the highly ingenious details of which will be noticed hereafter. The Fourdrinier machines have been greatly improved by the inventions of other skilful manufacturers.