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3500 BCE
Cuneiform
Most historians place cuneiform by the Sumerians in southern Mesopotamia as the first form of writing. It was made by pressing marks into wet clay that could later be fired to make permanent tablets of writing. The clay could be kept wet to allow for future changes. -
3200 BCE
Phonograms
Pictograms, very static symbols representing various objects, were the first part of writing systems. Though, they were vary limited, so the Sumerians developed phonograms, which were images that represented sounds, to allow more dynamic and clear sentences to be written. -
3000 BCE
Egyptian Hieroglyphics
Hieroglyphics were a writing system used by the Egyptians. It contained primarily pictograms. The Egyptians did a large amount of trade with the Sumerians, so it is theorized that is how they developed hieroglyphics. -
2150 BCE
The Epic of Gilgamesh
This is one of the world's oldest texts made by the Sumerians. -
1800 BCE
Proto-Sinaitic
Sinaitic writing is reported to be the first form of an alphabet. It developed around 1900 to 1700 BCE and was based on Egyptian hieroglyphics. It used roughly 30 glyphs of Egyptian glyphs being translated into their language. -
1200 BCE
Chinese Script
Around this time, China began developing it's own form of writing. It is suspected they had no inspiration from the Sumerians. Their script developed from divination techniques, like etching in shells different events, then heating the shell until it cracked over one of the events to reveal the prediction. -
1000 BCE
The Greek Alphabet
The Greeks' alphabet is derived from the Phoenicians and serves as an ancestor for most modern European alphabets. It introduced symbols to represent vowels that the previous alphabet lacked. -
600 BCE
The Latin Alphabet
The Latin alphabet is most widely used system. It can be traced back to the Greek alphabet and its inspirations. It's the alphabet we are using right now! -
800
Printing
Around 800 CE, the first appearances of printed writing start to appear. A Buddhist book, 'The Diamond Sutra', originating in China is said to have been the very first printed book. Other than that, historians have not confirmed where the first printing press was invented. -
1000
Bi Sheng's Printing Press
Bi Sheng's printing press, also from China, introduced moveable and interchangeable letters to printing. The letters were made out of fired clay instead of wood like other presses. Bi Sheng believed the wood's texture would be too inconsistent and would cause issues by absorbing too much moisture. -
1450
The Gutenberg Press
Printing presses did not appear in Europe until over a century after China had them. Johannes Gutenberg's press was the most widely known commercial printing press. It was made with replica and sand casting to quickly repeatedly manufacture the press. -
The Emergence of Typewriters
Plans for typewriters first started appearing in 1700 to 1800. In 1714, Henry Mill had a patent for a typewriter, although historians aren't sure if it was ever made. The majority of typing machines at this time were made with the idea of aiding the blind in mind. Mill's was made to write legal documents in a neat way. -
The Type-Writer
The Sholes and Glidden type-writer was one of the most widespread commercial typewriters and where people got the term in the first place. Many other typewriter models followed after this one. -
Selectric
Selectrics were much smaller typewriters using more streamlined technology that avoided jamming issues in typewriters. Selectrics specifically were made by IBM who were also developing computers at the time. -
Email
Computers were quickly developing as time went on. Before, you could only leave messages for others using the same computer, but Ray Tomlinson at ARPANET created email to message between computers, bringing on a new age of communicating with writing. -
Period: to
Forums and Chatting Online
As the internet developed, online forums and chat rooms. Some of the earliest forms of these were staged like bulletin boards, were users could leave their own information and read others'. These chat rooms were also where early emojis started to appear. The simplest emojis can be made with punctuation such as ":)" ":(" and ":0".
These sites would also lead the way for modern social media. -
Where is it Headed?
To me, it's very interesting how we are circling back to using images (emojis) in our writing. Though, our writing styles are splitting off into two forms. There is the proper text you will see in things like books and this presentation, and then there is the more casual writing we use when we text each other with emojis and abbreviations. I think these more informal things will continue to be very common place in casual conversation. It may become a very shortened or compressed way of writing.