Introduction
Introduction |
|
|
3500 BC Sumerian Clay Tablets come into general use. 2400 BC Date of earliest surviving papyrus scroll with writing. 150 BC The first paper is made in China. 47 AD The largest library in the world at the time, the Library of Alexandria, is damaged by fire. Many of the great works of the ancient world are lost forever. 751 AD Paper making introduced in the Islamic world. 868 AD The first book is printed on paper in China using block printed Buddhist scripts. 1085 Papermaking is introduced into Spain. 1418 The oldest known example of the use of woodcut is created. 1456 The Gutenberg Bible, the first use of movable type and the most important invention in launching the print revolution, is published in Mainz, Germany. 1493 The earliest known etchings are created by Daniel Hopfer in Augsburg, Germany. 1498 Music printing using movable type is invented by Ottaviano Petrucci in Venice. 1522 Luther's translation of the New Testament is published. 1534 The Frankfurt Book Fair is founded. 1661 The first Bible published in America, John Eliot's Algonquin Bible, is published by Samuel Green. 1709 The Copyright Act is passed in England. 1753 The British Library is founded. 1800 The Library of Congress is founded. 1841 Paperbacks are introduced by Tauchnitz Verlag in Germany. 1926 The first electronic transmission of moving images was accomplished by John Logie Baird. His invention led to the development of television. 1942 The first computer is developed in the United States. 1977 The first mass produced personal computer, the Apple II, is introduced. 1991 The World Wide Web is introduced. |
The exhibit will be on display in the Rotunda at the Springfield Library
from November 7, 1999 through May 31, 2000. A companion exhibit on the
Library's web site includes scanned images from many of the items on
display. Special programming has been scheduled at the library and the
Springfield Museum of Fine Arts.
Clicking on the thumbnail images in the virtual exhibit will link to
full-page images. Please note that some of these images are large and may
take some time to load on individual computers.
Special note: this Internet exhibit has been designed using the Verdana
font, one that has been specially designed for the computer screen. If your
browser does not display Verdana, you may download the font for free, for
Macs or PCs, at the
Channel Verdana site at Microsoft. Instructions for installing the font
are included at the site. To anyone living at the end of the twentieth century it is quite
clear that we are in the midst of an overwhelming and bewildering
communications revolution. Changes in work and society brought about by
computers are occurring daily. As we move into the next millennium, an
estimated 100 million people worldwide are using the Internet on a regular
basis, and use is increasing rapidly. The World Wide Web now contains
approximately a half-billion sites, while the amount of data processed over
the Internet doubles every 100 days. And if the amount of information
bombarding us daily isn't confusing enough, we are also faced with an
onslaught of new media. We can now read, listen to music, or watch a movie
through such sources as the CD, the CD-ROM, DVD, MP3, the Internet, audio
cassettes, TV, or the old-fashioned book.
Scholars are now revealing much about the early decades of
publishing, the tribulations in the nascent book trade as printing took
hold, the growth of literacy, and the development of libraries to house
these new books. And as we study this era more closely, it becomes
increasingly clear that events such as the rise of the middle class and the
Industrial Revolution were both influenced by, and in turn brought about,
considerable changes in the arts of reading. The public library, readers'
clubs, educational institutions, and the advent of the newspaper are all,
in part, the products of the conjunction of these key social events with
printing.
Through the selection of rare books displayed in this exhibit,
we can begin to consider the place these books occupied in their own time,
and we can hope to explore the questions we face as we embark upon the next
information revolution. It now seems imperative, as we step precariously
into the next millennium, to take a thoughtful gaze at these wonderful
books and to ask ourselves what each represents. What do they tell us
about how we learn, how we know each other, how the special qualities of
the printed page mold our mechanisms for processing information, and how
our world view may be profoundly altered by new forms of
communication? |
Through a selection of rare books from the Library's special
collections and related computer displays, this millennium exhibit explores
the development of the book after the invention of movable type in
mid-15th-century Europe. Included in the exhibit is a page from the
original 1456 Gutenberg Bible, early New England tracts, and other rare
books.
Yet this is not the first time that society has faced an
information revolution. Approximately 550 years ago, Johannes Gutenberg
developed the idea of printing books with movable type. The innovation
quickly spread throughout Europe, and within just 50 years 35 thousand
editions had been printed across Europe. The society we live in today is a
direct result of that astonishing revolution. Could we imagine democracy,
or modern science, without the explosion of readily accessible information
made possible by the printed book?