June 19, 1847

Nicholson Baker, born in New York City, on January 7, 1957, is an award winning novelist. His books include erotic fiction and a book suggesting pacifism was a sensible position to take in reference to World War II. I have not read these books and they are possibly better than they sound. But our purpose now is with the honored author of the nonfiction book Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper.(2001). This book , decrying the destruction of paper records by librarians, won a National Book Critics Circle Award. Parts of his research had previously been published in the New Yorker . Baker's other non fiction includes, The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber (1996) and The World on Sunday: Graphic Art in Joseph Pulitzer's Newspaper (1898– 1911) (2005).

Double fold: libraries and the assault on paper includes this mention of the industrial uses of mummy wrappings in the 19th century:
There were all the wrappings of crocodiles and cats, and those of the sacred bulls at Dashour, the burned bones of which, as Deck points out, were already being used to clarify syrup in the sugar refineries of lower Egypt. ...[Scientific American noticed the idea to use mummies wrapping for paper. On June 19, 1847 they wrote:]

Mehemet Ali has found a new source of revenue in the fine linen in which the immense deposits of mummies are wrapped, by applying it to the manufacture of paper. Calculations... make the linen swathings of the ancient Egyptians worth $21,000,000. This is better than stealing pennies from the eyes of dead men.