History of books

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Birthday Book Printing, the fourth of the six Walk of Ideas sculptures displayed in Berlin during 2006,
represents a pile of modern codexbooks.

The history of the books became an acknowledged academic discipline in the 1980s,
Contributors to the discipline include specialists from the fields of textual
scholarship, codicology, bibliography, philology, palaeography, art history, social
history and cultural history. Its key purpose is to demonstrate that the book as an object,
not just the text contained within it, is a conduit of interaction between readers and
words.
Prior to the evolution of the printing press, made famous by the Gutenberg Bible, each
text was a unique hand crafted article, personalized through the design features
incorporated by the scribe, owner, bookbinder and illustrator. [1] Analysis of each
component part of the book reveals its purpose, where and how it was kept, who read it,
ideological and religious beliefs of the period and whether readers interacted with the
text within. Even a lack of evidence of this nature leaves valuable clues about the nature
of that particular book.
 Contents

 1Origins
 2Chronology
 3Clay tablets
o 3.1Cuneiform and Sumerian Writing
 4Papyrus
 5East Asia
o 5.1Japan
 6Pre-columbian codices of the Americas
o 6.1Florentine Codex
 7Wax tablets
 8Parchment
o 8.1Greece and Rome
o 8.2Description
o 8.3Book culture
o 8.4Proliferation and conservation of books in Greece
o 8.5Book production in Rome
 9Paper
 10Middle Ages
o 10.1Books in monasteries
o 10.2Copying and conserving books
o 10.3The  scriptorium
o 10.4Transformation from the literary edition in the 12th century
 11Printing press
o 11.1List of notable printing milestones
 12Modern Era
o 12.1The Late Modern Period
o 12.2Contemporary Period
o 12.3E-books and the future of the book
 13Reading for the blind
o 13.1The making of Braille
o 13.2Spoken books
 14Gallery
 15See also
 16References
 17Selected Resources
o 17.1Books
o 17.2Periodicals
 18External links

Origins[edit]
The history of the book became an acknowledged academic discipline in the latter half
of the 20th century. It was fostered by William Ivins Jr.'s Prints and Visual
Communication(1953) and Henri-Jean Martin and Lucien Febvre's L'apparition du
livre (The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450–1800) in 1958 as well
as Marshall McLuhan's Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962).
Another notable pioneer in the History of the Book is Robert Darnton.[2]

Chronology[edit]
The history of the book starts with the development of writing, and various other
inventions such as paper and printing, and continues through to the modern day
business of book printing. The earliest history of books actually predates what would
conventionally be called "books" today and begins with tablets, scrolls, and sheets
of papyrus. Then hand-bound, expensive, and elaborate manuscripts known
as codices appeared. These gave way to press-printed volumes and eventually lead to
the mass printed tomes prevalent today. Contemporary books may even have no
physical presence with the advent of the e-book. The book also became more
accessible to the disabled with the advent of Braille and spoken books.

Clay tablets[edit]
Further information: Clay tablet
A Sumerian clay tablet, currently housed in the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, inscribed with the
text of the poem Inanna and Ebihby the priestess Enheduanna, the first author whose name is known[3]

Clay tablets were used in Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium BC. The calamus, an
instrument in the form of a triangle, was used to make characters in moist clay. People
used to use fire to dry the tablets out. At Nineveh, over 20,000 tablets were found,
dating from the 7th century BC; this was the archive and library of the kings of Assyria,
who had workshops of copyists and conservationists at their disposal. This presupposes
a degree of organization with respect to books, consideration given to conservation,
classification, etc. Tablets were used right up until the 19th century in various parts of
the world, including Germany, Chile, Philippines, and the Sahara Desert. [4][5]
Cuneiform and Sumerian Writing[edit]
Writing originated as a form of record keeping in Sumer during the fourth millennium
BCE with the advent of cuneiform. Many clay tablets have been found that show
cuneiform writing used to record legal contracts, create lists of assets, and eventually to
record Sumerian literature and myths. Scribal schools have been found by
archaeologists from as early as the second millennium BCE where students were taught
the art of writing.

Papyrus[edit]
Main article: Papyrus
The Book of the Dead of Hunefer, c. 1275 BC, ink and pigments on papyrus, in the British Museum(London)

After extracting the marrow from the stems of Papyrus reed, a series of steps
(humidification, pressing, drying, gluing, and cutting) produced media of variable quality,
the best being used for sacred writing.[6] In Ancient Egypt, papyrus was used as a
medium for writing surfaces, maybe as early as from First Dynasty, but first evidence is
from the account books of King Neferirkare Kakai of the Fifth Dynasty (about 2400 BC).
[7]
 A calamus, the stem of a reed sharpened to a point, or bird feathers were used for
writing. The script of Egyptian scribeswas called hieratic, or sacerdotal writing; it is
not hieroglyphic, but a simplified form more adapted to manuscript writing (hieroglyphs
usually being engraved or painted). Egyptians exported papyrus to other Mediterranean
civilizations including Greece and Rome where it was used until parchment was
developed.[8]
Papyrus books were in the form of a scroll of several sheets pasted together, for a total
length of 10 meters or more. Some books, such as the history of the reign of Ramses
III, were over 40 meters long. Books rolled out horizontally; the text occupied one side,
and was divided into columns. The title was indicated by a label attached to the cylinder
containing the book. Many papyrus texts come from tombs, where prayers and sacred
texts were deposited (such as the Book of the Dead, from the early 2nd millennium BC).

East Asia[edit]

A Chinese bamboo book

Before the introduction of books, writing on bone, shells, wood and silk was prevalent

in China long before the 2nd century BC, until paper was invented in China around the
1st century AD. China's first recognizable books, called jiance or jiandu, were made of
rolls of thin split and dried bamboo bound together with hemp, silk, or leather. [9] The
discovery of the process using the bark of the mulberry to create paper is attributed
to Ts'ai Lun (the cousin of Kar-Shun), but it may be older.[10] Texts were reproduced
by woodblock printing; the diffusion of Buddhist texts was a main impetus to large-scale
production. The format of the book evolved with intermediate stages of scrolls
folded concertina-style, scrolls bound at one edge ("butterfly books") and so on.
Although there is no exact date known, between 618 and 907 AD–The period of the
Tang Dynasty–the first printing of books started in China. [11][12]The oldest extant printed
book is a work of the Diamond Sutra and dates back to 868 AD, during the Tang
Dynasty.[11] The Diamond Sutra was printed by method of woodblock printing, a
strenuous method in which the text to be printed would be carved into a woodblock's
surface, essentially to be used to stamp the words onto the writing surface medium.
[13]
 Woodblock printing was a common process for the reproduction of already
handwritten texts during the earliest stages of book printing. This process was incredibly
time-consuming.[14]
Because of the meticulous and time-consuming process that woodblock printing was, Bi
Sheng, a key contributor to the history of printing, invented the process of movable type
printing (1041-1048 AD).[14][15] Bi Sheng developed a printing process in which written text
could be copied with the use of formed character types, the earliest types being made
of ceramic or clay material.[14][15] The method of movable type printing would later be
independently invented and improved by Johannes Gutenberg.[16]