notes

• writing was supposedly invented in egypt, and hieroglyphics were written on walls, but they also had papyrus paper
• papyrus
  • became the foundation of civilization and egypts #1 trade
  • plant that grows across the nile
  • becomes processed into paper through a weaving and pressing technique
  • almost a slippery feel when writing with reed pen, that's how they achieved the horizontal and quick sort of writing
  • papyrus was very easy and quick to make and therefore not very expensive, books were cheap
  • they had public libraries too
  • when rome's empire shrunk into sections, their access to papyrus became limited, and therefore books became rare, expensive, and precious objects.
• parchment
  • made from the skin of an animal, stretched out and very thinned
  • since they were so thin they were able to be folded, which was able to turn into codex
  • they had to kill a lot of animals to make a book though so whatever was written had to be important
  • because it's skin the ink sinks into it, and that's how the detail and ink stays so well preserved and high quality
  • it's a slower writing process
  • the biggest book production site in europe only produced a couple thousand books a year, and they spent a lot of money on parchment
  • you could buy a book for as much money as a house
• papyrus > parchment — a culture which had very broad and public literacy to very limited literacy
• tang dynasty paper
  • very thin, very fine, but very high quality, no rippage
  • opened the path to woodblock printing
  • paper was so easy to make and in such abundance that they could bind and sell blank notebooks
  • they had it kept secret for a while, how to make paper, but then they lost a war with islam and the secret was out
  • made from a mulberry tree
• islamic paper
  • the same process as china's except they smoothed out the paper very flat
  • their calligraphy required a very smooth writing surface
  • the paper required their writing to be very slow and precise, they needed this for religious reasons
  • they are not allowed to visually depict their god so they must do it through writing and offerings
  • the cheap paper cost allowed for a very smart civilization
• printing press
  • latin alphabet happens to be very separate from eachother gutenberg wanted a way to replace scribes and produce books on a mass production level, and because of that coincidence with the alphabet he was able to make the lead blocks.
  • he produced a bible first. he wanted to compete with the manuscripts so he imitated it as well as he could and had everyone fooled for centuries.
  • it was a hit, and very soon he had imitators.
  • the bible was his first choice because of the protestant revolution. they wanted to take the wealth away from catholicism, and so they needed a printed bible that they could mass produce so they could expand their views to the public eye.