All About . . . Books
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World Almanac for Kids
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An 'illuminated' manuscript
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If a Roman emperor wanted to read a book, he had to unroll it. Books were written on long scrolls (kind of like a roll of paper towels) that you unrolled as you went along. This was clumsy, especially if you were looking for a certain passage. Around A.D. 100 the codex was invented. It was made up of a stack of pages stitched together at the side and protected by a cover. The codex was easier to carry around, to store, and to search through. Books we read today look something like a codex.
In the Middle Ages books were made by monks who copied them by hand onto prepared animal skins called parchment. The monks often decorated the pages with beautiful color illustrations called "illuminations." Books were scarce, and few people who were not priests or monks could read. Even those who could read had to be rich to buy these hand-written books.
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Did You Know?
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The word "paper" comes from the ancient word "papyrus." Papyrus was a reed used in the ancient world to make writing material. It was made by slicing the stalks and gluing them together in a criss-cross pattern. The sheets were then glued together to make a scroll. Some ancient papyrus scrolls were over 30 feet long.
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A big change came with the use of paper and printing, which were first invented in China. Paper came into Europe through the Muslim world and was common by the 14th century. Johann Gutenberg of Germany perfected printing in the 1450s. Once books no longer had to be copied by hand and could be printed on paper, they became less expensive and reading became more common.
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World Almanac for Kids
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At first books were still not easy to make and not cheap. Each letter was on a separate piece of type, and a typesetter had to put each piece into place individually. Once all the letters for the page were in place, they were covered with ink and printed, one at a time, by hand on a press. By the 19th century, however, steam-powered presses could print out hundreds of pages at a time. Another invention was the linotype machine, which stamped out individual letters and set them up much faster than a typesetter could. Now books had become truly affordable, and the skill of reading was something that everyone was expected to learn. Today, with the use of computers, books can be easily transferred into electronic files, and read as e-books.
Libros: Todo sobre . . . Libros (Spanish Version)