The basement of Uraniborg included an alchemical laboratory with 16 furnaces for conducting distillations and other chemical experiments. Unusually for the time, Tycho established Uraniborg as a research centre, where almost 100 students and artisans worked from 1576 to 1597. Uraniborg also contained a printing press and a paper mill, both among the first in Scandinavia, enabling Tycho to publish his own manuscripts, on locally made paper with his own watermark. He created a system of ponds and canals to run the wheels of the paper mill. Over the years he worked on Uraniborg, Tycho was assisted by a number of students and protegés, many of whom went on to their own careers in astronomy: among them were Christian Sørensen Longomontanus, later one of the main proponents of the Tychonic model and Tycho's replacement as royal Danish astronomer; Peder Flemløse; Elias Olsen Morsing; and Cort Aslakssøn. Tycho's instrument-maker Hans Crol also formed part of the scientific community on the island.