SIC 3554 Paper Industries Machinery
SIC 3554
This category covers establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing machinery used in the pulp, paper, and paper products industries. Establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing printing trades machinery are classified in SIC 3555: Printing Trades Machinery and Equipment.
333291
Paper Industry Machinery Manufacturing
The United States is the world's leading producer of paper-making machinery. According to the U.S. Census Bureau's Statistics of U.S. Businesses, 319 establishments operated in this category for some or all of 2001. There were 13,169 paid employees receiving a payroll of about $581 million. The Annual Survey of Manufactures reported that about 7,800 people worked in production, putting in more than 16 million hours annually. Overall 2001 shipments for the industry were valued at more than $2.7 billion.
The first machines used for making paper were invented in France in the late eighteenth century. In 1799, Frenchman Nicholas Louis Robert received a patent on a machine that could produce a continuous roll of paper. Several years later, London stationers Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier financed improvements for Robert's paper-making machine, which eventually came to bear their name. Manufacturers began using the Fourdrinier machine for the commercial production of paper in England in 1812. Eventually, the Fourdrinier machine became the foundation of the paper-making industry.
The first Fourdrinier machine used in the United States was imported from England in 1827 and put into operation at a paper mill in Saugerties, New York. However, by 1829 the American company Phelps & Spafford began manufacturing Fourdrinier machines, the first of which was installed at Norwich, Connecticut. Phelps & Spafford reorganized after the recession of 1837 as Smith and Winchester, and continued to operate into the twentieth century.
Until the mid-1800s, paper was made principally from rags rather than wood. Between 1840 and 1860, several mechanical processes were developed that produced wood pulp suitable for making rough-grained paper. One of these pulp grinders was known as the Jordan refiner. Invented in 1858 by two Americans, Joseph Jordan and Thomas Eustace, the Jordan...
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