In papermaking, a large container at the head of a paper machine that supplies and distributes pulp mixture evenly across the width of the forming surface.
From 'head' (referring to the top/beginning of the machine) + 'box' (from Dutch 'buis' meaning pipe). This is modern industrial terminology from 19th-century papermaking technology.
The headbox is crucial to paper quality—how evenly it distributes pulp affects the entire sheet's consistency, and papermakers spend years perfecting this engineering!
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