History of Books

The history of books is one of the most fascinating stories in the history of man, since books have been an essential element in the development of human civilization, culture, politics, history, religion, and scientific endeavor. It’s important to note at this point that what we know today as a “book,” that is, a collection of pages bound together and usually secured within a book cover, is not the only way that books have been produced and published. Ancient manuscripts, for instance, were often rolled up into scrolls, which can also be considered books in their own right. Since the earliest forms of writing were invented by ancient civilizations, putting down information on paper (or its predecessors, such as papyrus) has been a useful and relatively widespread human activity.

The books of Antiquity are diverse in form and content, depending on the particular era as well as the geographical location, the materials available, and the cultural milieu in which the respective books were created. There are scrolls, codices, wax tablets, all of which were predecessors of modern books. In ancient times and the Middle Ages, before scrolls fell out of use in the West, a scroll was considered to be one book, whereas a codex would be a collection of books bound together. The Romans found wax tablets particularly useful, and they had made extensive use of them in education, as well as other activities.

One of the most revolutionary events in the history of books was the invention of the printing press by the German Johannes Gutenberg, in the mid-15th century. Whereas before, manuscripts had to be copied manually–a very long and tedious job–in order to be multiplied, it now became possible to mass produce books and raise the level of literacy among the general populace, as well as spread new revolutionary ideas and publish religious scriptures, most notably the Bible, previously inaccessible by the general public.

With the evolution of modern printing technologies, and later of computer technology, the art and trade of writing, publishing and selling books has been thoroughly revolutionized, and even though newer forms of learning, most notably the Internet, have gained a lot of ground in recent decades, books still occupy a place of prominence as one of the greatest and most enduring inventions of humankind.