-
3200 BCE
Cuneiform Tablets
These tablets were made of clay and used mainly by scribes in Mesopotamia. Clay was a readily available resource, making the tablets cheap and easy to produce. These tablets were often small enough to be hand-held and a reed stylus was used to make impressions in the clay. Cuneiform began as a pictographic form of writing, but quickly became more stylized and abstract for efficiency. -
3000 BCE
Papyrus
Papyrus scrolls were produced in Egypt as it grew abundantly on the Nile River. The papyrus reed was gathered, cut into strips which were laid on top of one another and pressed, which expressed the natural juices of the plant and adhered the strips together. The resulting sheets were then glued together into scrolls. Papyrus was manufactured in Egypt and shipped and sold around the Mediterranean region. -
1250 BCE
Wax Tablets
These tablets were used primarily in Greece and Rome, made of outer wooden boards and a beeswax writing surface that was dyed either black or red. A metal stylus was used for etching text into the wax surface. The boards were strung together and opened much like a modern book. Wax tablets were not used for permanent purposes, but for things like note taking or document first drafts, for school exercises, household lists or notes. -
200 BCE
Parchment Rolls
Parchment is made from animal skins which were widely abundant in many cultures, although the process was difficult and expensive as the animal would need to be slaughtered, skinned, the skin cleaned, and then stretched and scraped. The result was a very durable writing surface which could even be reused. Parchment became quite popular and was the most used writing surface from 500-1400 CE. -
105
Invention of Paper
Paper was invented in China where natural materials like silk, tree bark, or hemp were soaked until their fibers were broken down into a pulpy substance. Metal mesh screens were dipped into vats of these pulps and dried to create sheets of paper. This process was labor intensive as well as expensive, so paper did not become the popular medium for writing until much later in the 19th century when wood pulp became more prominently used. -
300
The Codex
A codex is, “leaves of some substrate bound together along the long edge.” This format gained popularity in the 300s, and quickly outpaced the scroll becoming the most popular format for books in Europe and the Middle East. The codex allowed for more information to be recorded than the scroll as text was recorded on both sides of the page, rather than just one side. The codex quickly became the preferred format for Christian texts, and spread throughout Europe as Christianity did. -
600
Woodblock Printing
The invention of paper allowed for the first style of relief printing, woodblock or woodcut prints. Text and images were carved in reverse into wooden blocks, ink would then be painted onto the surface of the wood which would be imprinted on paper sheets. This process was applied to only one side of the paper so as not to disrupt the side that was already printed. -
868
Diamond Sutra
The Diamond Sutra is known as the first printed book that can be definitively dated. The book was printed in scroll form in China and is called the Jin-gang Jin, or “Dialog with the Buddha”. Many of the early printed books were Buddhist texts, which advanced the form in China, Korea, and Japan. -
1040
Movable Type
Movable type are blocks of characters that can be changed and reassembled to print text, which was revolutionary as the blocks could be reused and allowed for the easy correction of errors. Movable type took time to catch on, beginning with blocks made of ceramic, then wood, and eventually cast in metals. Metal type evolved from the technology of casting coins. -
1455
The Gutenberg Bible
Johannes Gutenberg combined metal cast, movable type and wooden presses to create the printing press in Europe. Gutenberg printings of the Latin Vulgate Bible, or the 42-line Bible became the first printed books in Europe made with metal movable type. These bibles copied the medieval manuscripts that came before them in terms of appearance. The original run was 158 - 180 copies, 49 of which still exist today. -
1501
Precursor to Modern Paperbacks
In 1501 the Venetian printer Aldus Manutius began printing books by the poet Horace in a pocket-sized edition. This was an innovation as he printed popular literature in a smaller size, which was normally reserved for devotional texts. This trend caught on and has persisted into the modern day. -
The Mechanized Printing Press
The first successful steam-powered cylinder printing press was created by German inventor Friedrich Koenig, and the first machine was installed at The Times newspaper in London, in 1814. This more than tripled the number of sheets that could be printed in an hour with the iron hand press. Later improvements allowed for the front and back of the sheets to be printed at once. -
Wood Pulp Paper
The use of wood pulp to make paper instead of rags became popular in the mid 19th century and became the popular resource for the medium. The process for making paper was mechanized around this time as well, which was quite useful for newspaper printers, and eventually book printers. -
The Typewriter
The typewriter was invented to help those that struggled to write by hand and has influenced many pieces of modern technology. The QWERTY keyboard was also patented during the 1800s and was created in such a way to slow a typist down so that the bars of the typewriter would not stick. This keyboard was popularized with typewriters and is still used for electronic devices in the US today. -
Personal Computers
The first personal computers were released in the late 1970s, although they did not begin appearing in the average person’s home for another couple of decades. The rise of personal computers and the internet have led to the wide availability of digitized books, as well as completely changing the way we consume books and information into the present day. -
The First Web Page
August 6, 1991 is the date that the first web page appeared on the world wide web. Although not immediately important to the history of books, the internet went on to revolutionize how we absorb information, connect with one another, and created access to a wealth of knowledge that humans had never previously known. -
E-books
The first e-books were created in the 1970s by Project Gutenberg, but were not popularized until the early 2000s. Although physical books still outsell e-books worldwide, the format has grown steadily. E-books are cheaper than physical books and more accessible in many cases, making them popular for personal use, academic use such as textbooks, and also for public libraries. These formats can be difficult to keep indefinitely as technology moves at such a fast pace and is constantly changing. -
The Amazon Kindle
Although the Kindle was not the first e-reader, it did popularize the device. These e-readers allowed for digital books to be purchased and installed on a small, portable device. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos touted the device as the next innovation in books and used the cuneiform tablet, papyrus scrolls, and the codex in the marketing campaign for the Kindle.