Sealy Fourdrinier
Around the end of the 18th century Sealy and his brother were approached by John Gamble and Leger Didot, who were seeking financial support to develop an automatic paper making machine developed in Paris by Louis-Nicolas Robert, an employee of Didot.
In 1801–02 the Fourdriniers entrusted engineer Bryan Donkin (then working with John Hall)[2] with the development of Robert's model into a prototype continuous paper-making machine.
[3] The cost of developing and improving the machines was of the order of £60,000 and although the inventions were covered by various patents taken out by the Fourdrinier brothers, the costs of manufacture, installation and maintenance and the difficulty of collecting royalties forced the brothers to declare themselves bankrupt in 1810.
In 1837 a Parliamentary Select Committee acknowledged the importance of the Fourdriniers’ contribution to the paper industry and voted them £7000 compensation.
Another of her daughters, Eleanor Deane (1861–1941), married Henry Ernest Wodehouse and was the mother of the writer P. G.
Large rolls are usually sliced into a number of thin rolls, which can feed continuous presses (e.g. newspapers) or be cut into separate sheets.