  Man learned to write long before he learned to make paper. Smooth stones, clay tiles, and wax tablets, among other surfaces, were early precursors of scratch-pads and typewriter bond. Later, but before the modern form of a paged book developed, written records were most often kept on long rolls of papyrus, parchment, or vellum—the latter two being much alike. The lines of writing sometimes ran the entire length of these rolls, sometimes they ran crossways, and sometimes they paralleled the long edge but were divided into columns. The third arrangement is still used in Jewish scrolls of the law, which are kept on rollers, one at each end. Such a long strip could, however, be folded accordion-like instead of being rolled up. If the folds were made between the columns of writing, each column became a page and the whole began to resemble the book we are familiar with today. At first these rudimentary books were protected by wooden boards pasted to the first and last pages. As a next step holes were stabbed through every page near the left-hand fold, and a cord or thong laced through the holes held the “accordion” together along one side. By the fifth century a method had come into general use of sewing individually folded sheets together one by one, not to each other but to a series of flexible “hinges.” These were usually narrow strips of leather—four, five, or sometimes six depending on the height of the book—laid across the folded edges of the pages. Linen thread sewed through the folds and around each cross-strip in turn held the pages These methods of preserving written material have now largely been superseded by the printed and bound or machine-cased book: (A) Diptych or hinged tablet of wood, ivory, or the like, often carved, whose inner surfaces of wax carried writing impressed by the stylus. (B) Scroll with columnar writing on a pair of rollers. (C) Japanese “orihon,” accordion-folded and bound along one side. (D) Codex or early form of book, an illuminated manuscript protected between thin boards; our word “book” comes from the German for beech (Buch), a wood often used for this purpose. To guard the leather crossbands and linen thread from exposure and wear, it then became customary to cover the spine of the book with a wide, vertical strip of leather. Later, for better appearance and greater protection, the leather covering was extended partway onto the boards (the so-called “half-binding” of the medieval period) and then all the way. Thus was developed and perfected the bound book: a collection of folded sheets sewn together flexibly and protected between covers. Its physical structure was largely the creation of monastic craftsmen of the early Middle Ages, just as its literary content throughout that period was most often religious scripture or comment. |
|
