history and books
It has been said that the victors write history, but sadly that is not always true as it should be, however there is something that is a serious concern and that is if history is being revised by political correctness.
The history of publishing books has changed over time, following a timeline with the technological innovations of each time period. Technology has added to the quality and the quantity of content.
Add to that mass distribution, and you have the age of enlightenment.
History shows us that writing started to develop between 7,000BC and 4,000BC with the creation of pictographs and ideograms, both of which were based on pictures of real objects. Ever since the creation of writing, humans have had a strong desire to keep records and last through many years. The first recognizable kind of books were originally made out of wood and bamboo, both of which were used to make tablets.
Clay Tablets – First used in Mesopotamia around 3,000BC. The text was written with what was called a Kalamos, meaning reed pen. Once the Kalamos was used to write the desired text, the clay tablets were placed into a furnace in which they were fired, to remove the moisture in the clay.
Papyrus – Made from the marrow of stems, once processed through various steps of humidification, pressing, drying and cutting papyrus of differing quality as produced. Papyrus was most commonly used in sacred writings at around 2,400BC.
Parchment – Around 300BC parchment began to become more popular as it became known to be easier to protect the writings on it over time, due to being more solid than papyrus. Parchment was made out of the skins of animals, most commonly sheep, cattle and donkeys. The highest quality of parchment was known as vellum, and was the choice material for religious books of the medieval time period.
Paper – The paper making industry has its roots in China at approximately 105AD using hemp waste. Paper was used as a type of padding and for wrapping items for hundreds of years in China before it was used as a writing material in the 3rd century.
Printing Press – Until the 1440s all writing was done by hand. This required that anytime a second copy of a text was needed, there was also the need for someone to read one text and transcribe it to another. This process was very long and prone to human error. With the printing press the industrial age began as book production became a commercial venture, which ended up lowering the cost of books substantially, thus bringing educational materials to many who had never before had them.
This day in history...
Powered By wordpress plugins
Related posts: