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9000 BCE
Clay Tablets
Sumerians needed a way of keeping records of their trading exchanges. The first use of clay tablets recorded the quantities of various products like sheep, bags of grain, or loaves of bread. -
3000 BCE
Writing Characters
Sumerians made a leap into writing. They used pictograms for their words and sound. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and modern Chinese characters are some of the examples for pictographic script. -
3000 BCE
Papyrus Scrolls
While Egyptians also used clay, stone, and etc. to write, they often used papyrus scrolls. Fibers from the papyrus plant were laid crosswise to each other and beaten together to form a single sheet. The beaten papyrus sheets are then thin, flexible, and translucent. Then the individual sheets were glued together into long scrolls. Greeks and Romans also used the papyrus scrolls. -
Period: 101 to 300
Codex
Between this time, Romans started to sew groups of folded papyrus sheets together. They then bind them between two wooden covers into books that are similar to today's books. Because of its wooden covers, the Romans called this type of book a codex, which in Latin, meant "a piece of wood". -
Period: 301 to 400
Parchment
While papyrus scrolls was commonly used, there was some problematic qualities about the scrolls. The scrolls brittle with age and broke down under humid conditions. Later the people of Pergamum's, in Asia Minor, wrote on fine animal skins. The skins of cows, sheep, and goats used for writing were called parchment, from the Latin word, Pergamena. -
Period: 401 to 500
Written by Hand
In Rome, there were large monasteries with rooms called scriptoria. Here monks would copy manuscripts. The scribes in the scriptorium were not allowed to talk. They were not allowed to correct mistakes in the text from which they were copying. Because of this errors grew in each generation of a manuscript. Many historians believe that some copyists may have even been illiterate. -
Jan 1, 1501
The Birth of Printing
Johannes Gutenberg created the first type of printer, the printing press. The printing press applied pressure to an inked surface that is resting upon paper or cloth. Thereby transferring the ink. This invention became a start in the printing industry. This allowed the mas production of books.
