History

Questions

1. What was the usage of the book at first?
2. How was book printing developed?
3. How and why was typography and writing developed?
4. what kind of techniques where developed for printing books?
5. Are there different formats of books in history?
6. What is the history of monasteries, in relation to the development of books?
7. What was the influence of books like the bible?
8. What is the Asian history of books and techniques?
9. What are the most famous writers?
10. Number of books in different eras?
11. When was the first library built?
12. When were the first audiobooks introduced?

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Discussion

Origin

When writing systems were invented in ancient civilizations, nearly everything that could be written upon—stone, clay, tree bark, metal sheets—was used for writing.In China,silk was also a base for writing. Writing was done with brushes. Many other materials were used as bases: bone, bronze, pottery, shell, etc.Any material which will hold and transmit text is a candidate for books.

The book is also linked to the desire of humans to create lasting records. Stones could be the most ancient form of writing, but wood would be the first medium to take the guise of a book. The words biblos and liber first meant "fibre inside of a tree". In Chinese, the character that means book is an image of a tablet of bamboo.

Different formats of books

• Clay tablets

Clay tablets were used in Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC. The calamus, an instrument in the form of a triangle, was used to make characters in moist clay. The tablets were fired to dry them out. At Nineveh, 22,000 tablets were found, dating from the seventh century BC; this was the archive and library of the kings of Assyria, who had workshops of copyists and conservationists at their disposal. This presupposes a degree of organization with respect to books, consideration given to conservation, classification, etc.

• Wax tablets

Romans used wax-coated wooden tablets upon which they could write and erase by using a stylus. Usually these tablets were used for everyday purposes (accounting, notes) and for teaching writing to children.Several of these tablets could be assembled in a form similar to a codex.

• Papyrus

Papyrus is made by extracting the marrow from the stems, followed by steps of humidification, pressing, drying, gluing, and cutting. Papyrus books were in the form of a scroll of several sheets pasted together, for a total length of up to 10 meters or even more.

Many papyrus texts come from tombs, where prayers and sacred texts were deposited.This demonstrates that the development of the book, in its material makeup and external appearance, depended on a content dictated by political and religious values.

• Parchment

Parchment progressively replaced papyrus. Its production began around the third century BC. Made using the skins of animals, parchment proved easier to conserve over time; it was more solid, and allowed one to erase text. It was a very expensive medium because of the rarity of material and the time required to produce a document.

Printing technologies

Before the invention and adoption of the printing press, almost all books were copied by hand, which made books expensive and comparatively rare. Smaller monasteries had usually only some dozen books, medium sized a couple hundred.

In woodblock printing, a relief image of an entire page was carved out of blocks of wood. It could then be inked and used to reproduce many copies of that page. This method was used widely throughout East Asia, originating in China in the Han dynasty (before 220AD)as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. This method arrived to Europe in the early 14th century.

The development of the printing techniques of movable type by Pi Sheng and the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg around 1440 marks the entry of the book into the industrial age. The Western book was no longer a single object,written or reproduced by request.The cost of each individual book was lowered enormously,which in turn increased the distribution of books.

The printing technologies,from woodcut, engraving, etching, mezzotint,aquatint,drypoint to lithography,screen-printing,digital prints,foil Imaging,have been pushing the development of book industry through centuries.[Printmaking]

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Religious role of books

In early western, books are largely developed along with the spreading of religions, or say, at that time, books are mainly created for religious purpose.

Monasteries

A number of Christian books were destroyed at the order of Diocletian in 304 CE. During the turbulent periods of the invasions, it was the monasteries that conserved religious texts and certain works of Antiquity for the West.

The role of monasteries in the conservation of books is not without some ambiguity.
Reading was an important activity in the lives of monks, which can be divided into prayer. It was therefore necessary to make copies of certain works. There therefore existed "scriptoria" in many monasteries, where manuscripts where monks copied and decorated manuscripts that had been preserved.
However, the conservation of books was not exclusively in order to preserve ancient culture; it was especially relevant to understanding religious texts with the aid of ancient knowledge. Some works were never recopied, having been judged too dangerous for the monks. Moreover, in need of blank media, the monks scraped off manuscripts, thereby destroying ancient works. The transmission of knowledge was centered primarily on sacred texts.

Bible

The most salable book ever in the history is the holy Bible.
It is a collections of sacred writings of Judaism and Christianity.Judaism's Bible is often referred to as the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, which includes the sacred texts common to both the Christian and Jewish canons.The Christian Bible is called the Holy Bible, Scriptures, or Word of God. It is divided into two parts, the Old Testament and the New Testament; some versions also have an Apocrypha section. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canons contain books not found in the Tanakh, but which were found in the Greek Septuagint.
No book has influenced western history and culture more than the Bible.

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Asian history of books

Writing on bone, shells, wood and silk existed in China by the second century BC. Paper was invented in China around the first century.

The discovery of the process using the bark of the blackberry bush is attributed to Ts'ai Louen, but it may be older. Texts were reproduced by woodblock printing; the diffusion of Buddhist texts was a main impetus to large-scale production. In the eleventh century, a blacksmith, Pi Cheng, invented movable type, but woodblock printing remained the main technique for books, possibly because of the poor quality of the ink. The Koreans and Japanese also used movable type.

Printing took over much earlier and faster than in the West, but the format of the book evolved in a similar way to that in Europe, but much more slowly, and with intermediate stages of scrolls folded concertina-style, scrolls bound at one edge and so on. Printing was nearly always on one side of the paper only.

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Other general information

Library

In a traditional sense, Library means a collection of books. The prosperity of books led to the appearance of library.A library is a collection of information resources and services, organized for use, and maintained by a public body, institution, or private individual.But nowadays, a library is for storing information in the form of not only books, but also microfilm, microfiche, audio tapes, CDs, LPs, cassettes, video tapes and DVDs, etc.
Private or personal libraries made up of non-fiction and fiction books, first appeared in classical Greece. The first ones appeared some time near the 5th century BC.The spread of books, and attention to their cataloging and conservation, as well as literary criticism developed during the Hellenistic period with the creation of large libraries in response to the desire for knowledge exemplified by Aristotle.For example,The Library of Alexandria, a library created by Ptolemy Soter and set up by Demetrios of Phaleron. It contained 500,900 volumes (in the Museion section) and 40,000 at the Serapis temple (Serapeion).

Audio book

The first audio book produced ever was done in the Spanish language in Bogotá by Colombian author David Sánchez Juliao who recorded, back in 1975, a collection of short stories. The audio book, entitled, Why you Take me to the Hospital in a canoe, dad?From 1975 to 1981 Sánchez Juliao recorded and published short stories like El Flecha, El Pachanga, Abraham Al Humor, Foforito, and other stories that take place in the Colombian Department of Córdoba, along the banks of the Sinú River.
Audio Books are usually distributed on CDs, cassette tapes, or digital formats (e.g., MP3 and Windows Media Audio).Downloadable audio books accounted for approximately 9% of the market. In the United States, the most recent sales survey estimated the industry to be worth 871 million US dollars. Current industry estimates hover at around two billion US dollars per year.

Famous writers

See here

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