Toilet paper

Paper for personal hygiene appeared in China by 589 CE, documented by the scholar Yan Zhitui who noted that paper bearing the names of sages or quotations from classics should not be used for toilet purposes—implying that other paper already was. By the 14th century, China produced toilet paper industrially: records from 1393 show the imperial court ordered 720,000 sheets annually for royal use, with individual sheets measuring two by three feet.

The adjacent possible aligned early in China because papermaking itself had emerged there. By the 6th century, paper was cheap and abundant enough for disposable uses. The Chinese bureaucracy consumed enormous quantities for documents; excess or spoiled paper found secondary applications. Cultural practices around cleanliness, influenced by Buddhist and Confucian ideas about purity, created demand for hygienic alternatives to the rags, leaves, and water that other cultures used.

Paper dimensions varied by intended user. The Hongwu Emperor's court ordered sheets for the imperial family at 2 × 3 feet; commoners used smaller, rougher pieces. Quality paper was softened by processing; the imperial product was perfumed.

Western adoption came late and gradually. The first commercial toilet paper in America—Joseph Gayetty's Medicated Paper of 1857—was sold as a medical product for hemorrhoid relief. Perforated roll toilet paper appeared in 1890. Mass adoption required not just papermaking technology but plumbing infrastructure and changing cultural norms around sanitation.

The delay in Western adoption illustrates how technology requires social contexts. Paper was available in Europe for centuries before anyone thought to use it hygienically. Sewage systems, water closets, and Victorian sanitation movements created the framework where disposable toilet paper made sense.

China's millennium-long lead in this mundane technology reflects broader patterns: papermaking, printing, and bureaucratic record-keeping all advanced earlier there. Toilet paper was a downstream consequence of these developments—a disposable product enabled by the same manufacturing capacity that produced books and government records.