TIMELINE

In the first century AD the codex was invented, ushering in a change in the way information was conceived of and disseminated that would eventually impact the entire world. The scrappy newcomer survived a falling empire (Roman) and illiterate pirates (Vikings) to become one of the most important inventions. Not content to remain bound to the page by quills or even the movable type of the printing press, books leapt into the information age via the keyboard and electronic scanner to occupy a boundary-less space where the way they are read is again changing our relationship to the information available in the world. Enter our linkbase here and scroll through time, tracing the book's primary medium from paper to vellum to cloth to paper again, to arrive on the world wide web via silicon and await technology's whim to morph yet again, cosmetically altered but recognizable nonetheless.

Go to the full timeline database for interactive browsing and annotated links to online resources.