HUMAN INVENTIONS
DECEMBER 20, 2021
The Long History Of Book Invention
The long history of book invention that began from thousand years ago, helps building human history with written civilization.
A book is written document and the formats have gone through many forms. It began as scrolls, a kind of rolled manuscript made from the papyrus plant. Papyrus scrolls were the earliest forms of books.
The ancient Mesopotamian are usually credited with the invention of writing. Clay tablets from before 3000 BC show the scripts called cuneiform, presumably the language of the early Babylonians with the oldest coherent texts from about 2600 BC. The earliest known literary author is Enheduanna from Sumeria dates back to 24th century BC.
The oldest written story is the Epic of Gilgamesh known to exist. It’s an epic poem based on the historical King Gilgamesh who ruled Sumerian Uruk (now Iraq) in 2700 BC.
The Romans people developed the codex, made from wood and animal skins. The codex was more portable, sturdier and easier to store thus making it a more popular format. It opened like a book and had real pages.
Paper as we know it today, was invented about 2.000 years ago in China when Chinese crafting cloth sheets to record their drawings and writings. The recorded inventor was Ts’ai Lun in Lei-Yang, China, a Chinese court official.
During the Middle Ages, books were handwritten on parchment and decorated page by page. One of the first “books” can be found in the form of ancient scrolls as far as 4000 BC.The manuscripts were mostly made of papyrus plant and when opened the width could be between 14 to 54 feet wide.
The period of the Tang Dynasty, between 618 and 907 CE, the first printing book started in China. The oldest existing book, Diamond Sutra is considered to be the oldest surviving printed book in the world dates back to 868 CE during the Tang Dynasty. It is a Buddhist holy text found in a walled up cave in China along with other printed materials. It made up of Chinese characters printed on a scroll of grey printed paper, wrapped along a wooden pole. The Diamond Sutra is the earliest printed book in the form that we know today with pages bound together.
In 1454, Johannes Gutenberg from German invented the printing press technique to print the Gutenberg Bible and printing spread up all across Europe. He invented the movable type and innovations in casting the type type based on a matrix and hand mould. The invention made books less expensive to produce and became more widely available.
Currently the most read book in the world over the last 50 years is the Bible. James Chapman, a writer, created a list of the most read books in the world and he found that the Bible far outsold any other book with 3.9 billion copies sold for the last 50 years.
Every April 23, is the World Book Day. Also known as World Book and Copyright Day, this is an annual event organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to promote reading, publishing, and copyright.
April 23 was chosen as the World Book Day because on this date in 1616 Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega all died. Hence, the day was selected as a symbolic date for world literature to pay tribute to those great literary legends.
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