Mary Keefe's 7th grade students at the Williams School in Florence, S.C. for their question:
WHO INVENTED BOOKS?
The first book printed in the American Colonies was called "Bay Psalm Book,'' and it was compiled by Richard Mather, Thomas Welde and the Indian missionary, John Eliot. It was printed in Cambridge, Mass., in 1640 by Stephen Daye.
Before this first book was a long history of putting the written word down in printed form so that ideas could be shared with others.
Unfortunately, we do not know who invented the book. But we do know that since antiquity ideas were being recorded on tablets, wood or vellum.
Ancient Egyptians developed the use of gluing together pieces of papyrus eaves to form rolled scrolls that extended up to 40 yards.
Meanwhile, in ancient Assyria early book publishing took the form of clay tablets that were inscribed with cuneiform texts and hardened by baking for preservation.
The earliest printed work that we know about is a Chinese block printed book dated 868. And we also know that books printed from movable type were first produced by the Chinese artisan Pi. Sheng between 1041 and 1049, a full four centuries before the discoveries made later by Gutenberg.
Most of the early Chinese books consisted of rolls of paper printed on one side. There is, however, a specimen dated 949 that looks very much like a modern book.
In 1501 European book printing moved into its infancy and great things came later. Before then, however, books were known as incunabula. They were formed of leaves of parchment or paper laboriously printed from blocks of wood on which an engraver had cut in relief the letters and figures of the text. So called block books were printed in this way.
Movable type probably developed when it was discovered that an occasional error on one of the blocks required the cutting of a single letter to correct it.
Johann Gutenberg of Mainz, Germany, worked out a system of separate little blocks of wood that could be fitted together to make words, sentences and whole pages. His masterpiece was printed between 1450 and 1456 a handsome, large, two volume edition of the Bible.
The art of book printing really spread with Gutenberg. By 1500, just over 30 years after Gutenberg died, more than 40,000 books had been printed in Europe. By 1539, just 47 years after Columbus found America, a printing press was at work in the New World, in Mexico City.