The history of books

China. Paper.

But the enlightenment was saved by the Chinese. They invented paper. And they invented it only because they didn't grow any papyrus, and it was necessary to write on something. And the Chinese have always greatly respected the enlightenment and contributed to it in every possible way.

So, the Chinese invented paper from improvised means. It happened around the IV century. And, slowly, paper first came into wide use in China itself, even since the seventh century a periodical newspaper was published there, despite the fact that in the rest of the world at that time the cost of a book was equated to the cost of a flock of sheep.

Paper making. China.

Then it entered the Arab world, and Europe received it from the Arabs, where paper began to be made in the XI century. But, nevertheless, parchment was used along with it for a very long time.

The books were handwritten, they were created for a long time. In the Middle Ages in Europe, books began to be written not only in monasteries, as it was before, but also in the secular world. Professions related to writing books have appeared. Copyists, proofreaders, rubricators, some copied books, others checked the rewritten book with the original, others drew capital letters.There were also calligraphers who dealt with important books and possessed the art of calligraphy.

And then it came time to create printed, not handwritten books. Since rewriting books is a complicated, expensive and time-consuming business, people wondered how it could be simplified. And they came up with it! They just began to make signs out of wood, where the text was applied in a mirror image. Although, of course, the production of such plates is also not easy, but, on the other hand, you can immediately make many copies of one page.

A little later, again in China, in the XI century, a certain blacksmith Pi Shen came up with how to simplify the printing of books even more and suggested making typeset pages. That is, having made a lot of individual clay icons, he, in a special frame, collected them into text, attaching wax to the frame, and then also, smearing with paint, printed the pages. These icons were reusable, they could be pulled out of one frame and inserted into another by typing a different text.

And finally, in the XV century, Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press! Since that time, book printing, and with it the enlightenment, has been developing at an increasingly rapid pace. Printing houses began to appear, and with them new professions, such as typesetter, bookbinder and others. Books became increasingly cheaper with the use of new materials and improved printing.

The printing press.

Paper soon came into widespread use, and even poor people got the opportunity to have books.

The Age of Enlightenment

The eighth century - the Age of Enlightenment - allowed the book to enter all homes, it became an integral part of life, the authors of books made fortunes on the sale of their works, became influential people. Progress is going faster and faster, and periodicals, newspapers, magazines are already appearing.

Books are already everywhere, they are no longer (with rare exceptions) an indicator of the wealth of their owners. Now they are more an indicator of education.

Now books are experiencing a new stage of development, e-books have appeared. And why not? For many centuries, the delivery of information has changed so much: from a clay tablet and patterns on the cave vault to an electronic book, and even an entire library that can fit on a small USB flash drive.

But, no matter what leaps and bounds progress is flying now, humanity will try to preserve the books of the past that have come down to our days and the invaluable information they carry. How will the history of the book develop further? Let's see!

It was they who came up with cuneiform writing - sequences of vertical and horizontal wedges drawn on clay tablets that formed texts. Several tablets were used to write particularly voluminous texts. The Sumerians also own the invention and the first record of numbers.

But even before the Sumerians, people felt a desire to write down their thoughts and convey them to their fellow tribesmen and, possibly, to descendants. Therefore, they used everything that came to hand and captured as best they could. At first they were drawings. They painted in caves, and hollowed out on stones, and sometimes even used strange materials, such as fish skins. numbers.

Cuneiform writing

Then clay tablets appeared, then papyrus, and they also began to decorate their buildings with drawings. But it was not very convenient to write on the stones. A potential reader had to reach this stone and only read the author's highly artistic work on the spot, which was not always convenient. Clay tablets are a more mobile material than the vaults of the cave, but you can't take much away either. And if the author has accumulated a lot of thoughts and has created a huge treatise, who will be able to read it? And where to store this mass of clay tablets?

Cuneiform writing

Then, for many reasons, the drawings began to be slowly replaced with symbols. Firstly, not everyone had a talent for drawing, and secondly, it was not always possible to correctly understand what the author wanted to say with this drawing. So, little by little, people began to use different signs that denoted words and whole expressions, and then individual letters.

Ancient Egypt. Papyrus.

Enlightenment was welcomed in ancient Egypt. No wonder many famous ancient Egyptian monuments are completely painted with inscriptions. But the Egyptians did not stop there, and having written all their buildings, they came up with a papyrus so that the rest of the works could be written there already.

Papyrus is a material made from the plant of the same name, which grew in huge quantities on the banks of the Nile. Scrolls were made from it, gluing the leaves together. Sometimes the length of the scroll reached a kilometer! Here the authors could roam. And they wrote a huge number of such scrolls that they even had to create the Library of Alexandria to store it all somewhere. There were about 700 thousand papyri!

Papyrus

Everything would be fine, especially since the Egyptians still exported their papyrus to different countries, but this material had some drawbacks. It was fragile, short-lived, and except in the form of a scroll, it could not be stored in any other way. Even special leather cases were made, a tag with the name of the work was sewn to them, and the scroll was stored in this form. It was impossible to make a book, because the papyrus just crumbled at the folds.

Parchment books

And so they invented parchment, it was also called velen (although opinions differ here, since there is an opinion that velen are sheets made only from calfskin, and parchment can be made from the skin of any animal). The word "parchment" comes from the name of the city of Pergamum in Asia Minor, where it was invented. It was an expensive material, but it was much more durable than papyrus.

It was made from animal skins, processed in a special way. He had huge advantages over papyrus. Firstly, unlike papyrus, parchment could be written on both sides, secondly, it was very strong and could be sewn into books, thirdly, it could be stored for a very long time, again due to its strength.

That's how parchment conquered the world. Parchment books were works of art, they were painted purple and sometimes black, the text was written in silver and gold, decorated with fancy patterns.

Rich people have already tried to have books on parchment, refusing papyrus. And the poor did not have any books at all at that time, because they cost fabulous money. There were cases that the book was exchanged for good estates.