Tuesday, February 2, 2010

A book lost in time

5000 BC Cave art begins to appear  

3000 BC Man dreams of symbols for things, does not know what to put it down on. Uses mud, scratches on trees, etches in stone etc

2000 BC Alphabets evolve 

1000 BC Writing is widespread, on papyrus, leaves, silk, bamboo, clay... 

500 BC Copying a book helped everyone, including the author.      

100 BC The first bibliophiles emerge, along with the first libraries  

100 The Chinese invent paper  

300 The keeper of the Library of Alexandria receives strange books from many parts of the world. Most of them are copied out onto parchment, and the original volumes are either returned or kept in a smaller tome. A time traveler just passing through all the wonders of the ancient world brings him a package, to give to the librarian. The keeper of the Library looks at the future of books. After the time traveler leaves, he burns the Library down. 

700 The Arabs bind together the first books, and become the first to sell them in markets. 

900 Anything worth writing down was worth fighting over. 

1100 Around the world, people start printing using blocks of wood or other similar material.

1436 Gutenberg bridges the divide between creating intricately crafted blocks of metal, and a thousand words on a single page.

1886 The Berne Convention introduces the world to the concept of Copyright

2007 Amazon debuts the Kindle

xxxx A time traveler picks up a kindle on his backwards trip through history, to donate to a library that dedicatedly collected every book in existence.