Thomas Cobb, Junior Invents a Machine for Manufacturing Paper in Separate Sheets

In 1807 English papermaker Thomas Cobb, Junior produced a machine for further mechanizing the papermaking process. Cobb's British patent No. 3580 for "Certain Further Improvements in the Art of Making Paper in Separate Sheets" was distinctive in that it described a papermaking machine which used mechanical moulds on which one sheet was made at a time. The machine was completely automatic; no handling of the sheet was necessary until it was pressed and ready to be air-dried. 

"This machine consisted of the usual vat, or chest, and breast-box with a delivery-slice, and a conveyer band on which the moulds were placed. This conveyer band was worked by hand, and the mould stayed under the delivery-slice long enough to get a supply of stuff, and was then passed on. In the orignal model the mould was then taken off by hand and couched onto a pile, as in ordinary hand-made paper-making. Subsequently, however, Cobb added another conveyer, onto which the moulds passed, and when they reached the end of the second conveyer they came under a couch-roll, round which was travelling an endless felt. As the moulds passed this roll, the sheet was couched off on the felt and taken up and through two press-rolls, which squeezed the paper sufficiently dry for it to be handled. Thomas Cobb persisted for a good many years with this machine, patented several improvements to it in 1812, by when had got it very much more mechanized, and it was quite an elaborate machine" (Clapperton, The Paper-Making Machine. Its Invention, Evolution, and Development [1967] 59-60).