Louis Braille was a French educator and inventor of a system of reading and writing for use by the blind or visually impaired. His system remains virtually unchanged to this day, and is known worldwide simply as braille.
Blinded in both eyes as a result of an early childhood accident,
Louis Braille mastered his disability while still a boy. He excelled in
his education and received a scholarship to France's Royal Institute for Blind Youth.
While still a student there, he began developing a system of tactile
code that could allow blind people to read and write quickly and
efficiently. Inspired by the military cryptography of Charles Barbier,
Braille constructed a new method built specifically for the needs of
the blind. He presented his work to his peers for the first time in
1824.
In adulthood, Louis Braille served as a professor at the
Institute and had an avocation as a musician, but he largely spent the
remainder of his life refining and extending his system. It went unused
by most educators for many years after his death, but posterity has
recognized braille as a revolutionary invention, and it has been adapted
for use in languages worldwide.
Early life
Birthplace of Louis Braille in Coupvray
Louis Braille was born in Coupvray, a small town about twenty miles east of Paris, on 4 January 1809. He and his three elder siblings – Monique Catherine (b. 1793), Louis-Simon (b. 1795), and Marie Céline (b. 1797)
– lived with their parents, Simon-René and Monique, on three hectares
of land and vineyards in the countryside. Simon-René maintained a
successful enterprise as a leatherer and maker of horse tack.
As soon as he could walk, Braille spent time playing in his
father's workshop. At the age of three, the child was playing with some
of the tools, trying to make holes in a piece of leather with an awl.
Squinting closely at the surface, he pressed down hard to drive the
point in, and the awl glanced across the tough leather and struck him in
one of his eyes. A local physician bound and patched the affected eye
and even arranged for Braille to be met the next day in Paris by a
surgeon, but no treatment could save the damaged organ. In agony, the
young boy suffered for weeks as the wound became severely infected—an
infection which then spread to his other eye, likely due to sympathetic ophthalmia.
Louis Braille survived the torment of the infection but by the age of five he was completely blind in both eyes. Due to his young age, Braille did not realize at first that he had lost his sight, and often asked why it was always dark.
His parents made many efforts – quite uncommon for the era – to raise
their youngest child in a normal fashion, and he prospered in their
care. He learned to navigate the village and country paths with canes
his father hewed for him, and he grew up seemingly at peace with his
disability. Braille's bright and creative mind impressed the local teachers and priests, and he was accommodated with higher education.
Education
Braille
studied in Coupvray until the age of ten. Because of his combination of
intelligence and diligence, Braille was permitted to attend one of the
first schools for blind children in the world, the Royal Institute for
Blind Youth, since renamed to the National Institute for Blind Youth in Paris. Braille, the last of the family's children to leave the household, departed for the school in February 1819.
At that time the Royal Institute was an underfunded, ramshackle affair,
but it provided a relatively stable environment for blind children to
learn and associate together.
Haüy system
The children were taught how to read by a system devised by the school's founder, Valentin Haüy.
Not blind himself, Haüy was a philanthropist who devoted his life to
helping the blind. He designed and manufactured a small library of books
for the children using a technique of embossing heavy paper with the raised imprints of Latin letters.
Readers would trace their fingers over the text, comprehending slowly
but in a traditional fashion which Haüy could appreciate.
Bust and awl exhibit at the Braille birthplace museum in Coupvray
Braille was helped by the Haüy books, but he also despaired over
their lack of depth: the amount of information kept in such books was
necessarily small. Because the raised letters were made in a complex
artisanal process using wet paper pressed against copper wire, the
children could not hope to "write" by themselves. So that the young
Louis could send letters back home, Simon-René provided him with an
alphabet made from bits of thick leather. It was a slow and cumbersome
process, but the boy could at least trace the letters' outlines and
write his first sentences.
The handcrafted Haüy books all came in uncomfortable sizes and
weights for children. They were laboriously constructed, very fragile,
and expensive to obtain: when Haüy's school first opened, it had a total
of three books.
Nonetheless, Haüy promoted their use with zeal. To him, the books
presented a system which would be readily approved by educators and
indeed they seemed – to the sighted – to offer the best achievable
results. Braille and his schoolmates, however, could detect all too well
the books' crushing limitations. Nonetheless, Haüy's efforts still provided a breakthrough achievement – the recognition of the sense of touch
as a workable strategy for sightless reading. The Haüy system's main
drawback was that it was "talking to the fingers with the language of
the eye".
Teacher and musician
Braille
read the Haüy books repeatedly, and he was equally attentive to the
oral instruction offered by the school. He proved to be a highly
proficient student and, after he had exhausted the school's curriculum,
he was immediately asked to remain as a teacher's aide. By 1833, he was
elevated to a full professorship. For much of the rest of his life,
Braille stayed at the Institute where he taught history, geometry, and
algebra.
The first version of braille, composed for the French alphabet
Braille was determined to invent a system of reading and writing that
could bridge the gap in communication between the sighted and the
blind. In his own words: "Access to communication in the widest sense is
access to knowledge, and that is vitally important for us if we [the
blind] are not to go on being despised or patronized by condescending
sighted people. We do not need pity, nor do we need to be reminded we
are vulnerable. We must be treated as equals – and communication is the
way this can be brought about."
Three forms of the letters "A" and "Z"
Origins
In 1821, Braille learned of a communication system devised by Captain Charles Barbier of the French Army. Some sources depict Braille learning about it from a newspaper account read to him by a friend, while others say the officer, aware of its potential, made a special visit to the school. In either case, Barbier willingly shared his invention called "night writing"
which was a code of dots and dashes impressed into thick paper. These
impressions could be interpreted entirely by the fingers, letting
soldiers share information on the battlefield without having light or
needing to speak.
The captain's code turned out to be too complex to use in its original
military form, but it inspired Braille to develop a system of his own.
Design
Braille worked tirelessly on his ideas, and his system was largely completed by 1824, when he was fifteen years old.
From Barbier's night writing, he innovated by simplifying its form and
maximizing its efficiency. He made uniform columns for each letter, and
he reduced the twelve raised dots to six. He published his system in 1829,
and by the second edition in 1837 he had discarded the dashes because
they were too difficult to read. Crucially, Braille's smaller cells were
capable of being recognized as letters with a single touch of a finger.
Braille created his own raised-dot system by using an awl,
the same kind of implement which had blinded him. In the process of
designing his system, he also designed an ergonomic interface for using
it, based on Barbier's own slate and stylus
tools. By soldering two metal strips across the slate, he created a
secure area for the stylus which would keep the lines straight and
readable.
By these modest means, Braille constructed a robust communication
system. "It bears the stamp of genius" wrote Dr. Richard Slating
French, former director of the California School for the Blind, "like the Roman alphabet itself".
Musical adaptation
The system was soon extended to include braille musical notation.
Passionate about his own music, Braille took meticulous care in its
planning to ensure that the musical code would be "flexible enough to
meet the unique requirements of any instrument". In 1829, he published the first book about his system, Method of Writing Words, Music, and Plain Songs by Means of Dots, for Use by the Blind and Arranged for Them. Ironically this book was first printed by the raised letter method of the Haüy system.
Publications
Braille produced several written works about braille and as general education for the blind. Method of Writing Words, Music, and Plain Songs... (1829) was revised and republished in 1837; his mathematics guide, Little Synopsis of Arithmetic for Beginners, entered use in 1838; and his monograph New Method for Representing by Dots the Form of Letters, Maps, Geometric Figures, Musical Symbols, etc., for Use by the Blind was first published in 1839. Many of Braille's original printed works remain available at the Braille birthplace museum in Coupvray.
Decapoint
New Method for Representing by Dots...
(1839) put forth Braille's plan for a new writing system with which
blind people could write letters that could be read by sighted people. Called decapoint,
the system combined his method of dot-punching with a new specialized
grill which Braille devised to overlay the paper. When used with an
associated number table (also designed by Braille and requiring
memorization), the grill could permit a blind writer to faithfully
reproduce the standard alphabet.
After the introduction of decapoint, Braille gave assistance to his friend Pierre-François-Victor Foucault,
who was working on the development of his Raphigraphe, a device that
could emboss letters in the manner of a typewriter. Foucault's machine
was hailed as a great success and was exhibited at the World's Fair in Paris in 1855.
Later life
Although
Braille was admired and respected by his pupils, his writing system was
not taught at the Institute during his lifetime. The successors of
Valentin Haüy, who had died in 1822, showed no interest in altering the
established methods of the school,
and indeed, they were actively hostile to its use. Dr. Alexandre
François-René Pignier, headmaster at the school, was dismissed from his
post after he had a history book translated into braille.
Braille had always been a sickly child, and his condition
worsened in adulthood. A persistent respiratory illness, long believed
to be tuberculosis,
dogged him. Despite the lack of a cure at the time, Braille lived with
the illness for 16 years. By the age of forty, he was forced to
relinquish his position as a teacher. When his condition reached mortal
danger, he was admitted to the infirmary at the Royal Institution, where
he died in 1852, two days after he had reached the age of forty-three.
Through the overwhelming insistence of the blind pupils, Braille's
system was finally adopted by the Institute in 1854, two years after his
death.
The system spread throughout the French-speaking world, but was slower
to expand in other places. However, by the time of the first
all-European conference of teachers of the blind in 1873, the cause of
braille was championed by Dr. Thomas Rhodes Armitage
and thereafter its international use increased rapidly. By 1882, Dr.
Armitage was able to report that "There is now probably no institution
in the civilized world where braille is not used except in some of those
in North America."
Eventually even these holdouts relented: braille was officially adopted
by schools for the blind in the United States in 1916, and a universal
braille code for English was formalized in 1932.
New variations in braille technology continue to grow, including such innovations as braille computer terminals; RoboBraille email delivery service; and Nemeth Braille,
a comprehensive system for mathematical and scientific notation. Almost
two centuries after its invention, braille remains a system of powerful
and enduring utility.
Honors and tributes
The immense personal legacy of Louis Braille was described in a 1952 essay by T.S. Eliot:
"Perhaps
the most enduring honor to the memory of Louis Braille is the
half-conscious honor we pay him by applying his name to the script he
invented – and, in this country [England], adapting the pronunciation of
his name to our own language. We honor Braille when we speak of braille. His memory has in this way a security greater than that of the memories of many men more famous in their day."
Braille's childhood home in Coupvray is a listed historic building and houses the Louis Braille Museum. A large monument to him was erected in the town square which was itself renamed Braille Square. On the centenary of his death, his remains were moved to the Panthéon in Paris. In a symbolic gesture, Braille's hands were left in Coupvray, reverently buried near his home.
Postage stamp, East Germany, 1975
Dollar coin (USA, 2009), issued for Braille's birthday bicentennial
Statues and other memorials to Louis Braille can be found around the
world. He has been commemorated in postage stamps worldwide, and the asteroid9969 Braille was named for him in 1992. The Encyclopædia Britannica lists him among the "100 Most Influential Inventors Of All Time".
The 200th anniversary of Braille's birth in 2009 was celebrated
throughout the world by exhibitions and symposiums about his life and
achievements. Among the commemorations, Belgium and Italy struck 2-euro
coins, India struck a 2-rupee coin, and the USA struck a one dollar
coin, all in Braille's honor.
World Braille Day is celebrated every year on Braille's birthday, January 4.
In popular culture
Because
of his accomplishments as a young boy, Braille holds a special place as
a hero for children, and he has been the subject of a large number of
works of juvenile literature. Other appearances in the arts include the American TV special Young Heroes: Louis Braille (2010); the French TV movie Une lumière dans la nuit (2008) (released in English as The Secret of Braille); and the dramatic play Braille: The Early Life of Louis Braille (1989) by Lola and Coleman Jennings. In music, Braille's life was subject of the song Merci, Louis, composed by the Halifax singer-songwriter Terry Kelly, chair of the Canadian Braille Literacy Foundation. The Braille Legacy, a musical which tells the story of Louis Braille, directed by Thom Southerland and starring Jérôme Pradon, debuted at the Charing Cross Theatre in April 2017.
The global language system is the "ingenious pattern of connections between language groups". Dutch sociologistAbram de Swaan developed this theory in 2001 in his book Words of the World: The Global Language System
and according to him, "the multilingual connections between language
groups do not occur haphazardly, but, on the contrary, they constitute a
surprisingly strong and efficient network that ties together – directly
or indirectly – the six billion inhabitants of the earth." The global language system draws upon the world system theory to account for the relationships between the world's languages and divides them into a hierarchy consisting of four levels, namely the peripheral, central, supercentral and hypercentral languages.
Theory
Background
According
to de Swaan, the global language system has been constantly evolving
since the time period of the early 'military-agrarian' regimes.
Under these regimes, the rulers imposed their own language and so the
first 'central' languages emerged, linking the peripheral languages of
the agrarian communities via bilingual speakers to the language of the
conquerors. Then was the formation of empires, which resulted in the
next stage of integration of the world language system.
Firstly, Latin emerged from Rome. Under the rule of the Roman Empire,
which ruled an extensive group of states, the usage of Latin stretched
along the Mediterranean coast, the southern half of Europe, and more
sparsely to the North and then into the Germanic and Celtic lands. Thus,
Latin evolved to become a central language in Europe from 27 BC to 476
AD.
Secondly, there was the widespread usage of the pre-classical
version of Han Chinese in contemporary China due to the unification of
China in 221 BC by Qin Shi Huang.
Thirdly, Sanskrit started to become widely spoken in South Asia from the widespread teaching of Hinduism and Buddhism in South Asian countries.
Fourthly, the expansion of the Arabic empire also led to the
increased usage of Arabic as a language in the Afro-Eurasian land mass.
Military conquests of preceding centuries generally determine the distribution of languages today.
Supercentral languages spread by land and sea. Land-bound languages spread via marching empires: German, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese and Japanese.
However, when the conquerors were defeated and were forced to move out
of the territory, the spread of the languages receded. As a result, some
of these languages are currently barely supercentral languages and are
instead confined to their remaining state territories, as is evident
from German, Russian and Japanese.
On the other hand, sea-bound languages spread by conquests overseas: English, French, Portuguese, Spanish.
Consequently, these languages became widespread in areas settled by
European colonisers and relegated the indigenous people and their
languages to peripheral positions.
Besides, the world-systems theory
also allowed the global language system to expand further. It focuses
on the existence of the core, semi-peripheral and peripheral nations.
The core countries
are the most economically powerful and the wealthiest countries.
Besides, they also have a strong governmental system in the country,
which oversees the bureaucracies in the governmental departments. There
is also the prevalent existence of the bourgeois,
and core nations have significant influence over the non-core, smaller
nations. Historically, the core countries were found in northwestern
Europe and include countries such as England, France and the
Netherlands. They were the dominant countries that had colonized many
other nations from the early 15th century to the early 19th century.
Then is the existence of the periphery countries,
the countries with the slowest economic growth. They also have
relatively weak governments and a poor social structure and often depend
on primary industries as the main source of economic activity for the
country.
The extracting and exporting of raw materials from the peripheral
nations to core nations is the activity bringing about the most
economic benefits to the country. Much of the population that is poor
and uneducated, and the countries are also extensively influenced by
core nations and the multinational corporations found there.
Historically, peripheral nations were found outside Europe, the
continent of colonial masters. Many countries in Latin America were peripheral nations during the period of colonization, and today peripheral countries are in sub-Saharan Africa.
Lastly, the presence of the semiperiphery countries,
those in between the core and the periphery. They tend to be those
which started out as peripheral nations and are currently moving towards
industrialization and the development of more diversified labour
markets and economies. They can as well come about from declining core
countries. They are not dominant players in the international trade
market. As compared to the peripheral nations, semi-peripheries are not
as susceptible to manipulation by the core countries. However, most of
these nations have economic or political relations with the core.
Semi-peripheries also tend to exert influence and control over
peripheries and can serve to be a buffer between the core and peripheral
nations and ease political tensions. Historically, Spain and Portugal
were semi-peripheral nations after they fell from their dominant core
positions. As they still maintained a certain level of influence and
dominance in Latin America over their colonies, they could still
maintain their semi-peripheral position.
According to Immanuel Wallerstein,
one of the most well-known theorists who developed the world-systems
approach, a core nation is dominant over the non-core nations from its
economic and trade dominance. The abundance of cheap and unskilled
labour in the peripheral nations makes many large multinational corporations
(MNCs), from core countries, often outsource their production to the
peripheral countries to cut costs, by employing cheap labour. Hence, the
languages from the core countries could penetrate into the peripheries
from the setting up of the foreign MNCs in the peripheries. A
significant percentage of the population living in the core countries
had also migrated to the core countries in search of jobs with higher
wages.
The gradual expansion of the population of migrants makes the
language used in their home countries be brought into the core
countries, thus allowing for further integration and expansion of the
world language system. The semi-peripheries also maintain economic and
financial trade with the peripheries and core countries. That allows for
the penetration of languages used in the semi-peripheries into the core
and peripheral nations, with the flow of migrants moving out of the
semi-peripheral nations to the core and periphery for trade purposes.
Thus, the global language system examines rivalries and
accommodations using a global perspective and establishes that the
linguistic dimension of the world system goes hand in hand with the
political, economic, cultural and ecological aspects. Specifically, the
present global constellation of languages is the product of prior
conquest and domination and of ongoing relations of power and exchange.
Q-value
is the communicative value of a language i, its potential to connect a speaker with other speakers of a constellation or subconstellation, "S". It is defined as follows:
The prevalence of language i, means the number of competent speakers in i, , divided by all the speakers, of constellation S. Centrality, is the number of multilingual speakers who speak language i divided by all the multilingual speakers in constellation S, .
Thus, the Q-value or communication value is the product of the prevalence and the centrality of language i in constellation S.
Consequently, a peripheral language has a low Q-value and the
Q-values increase along the sociology classification of languages, with
the Q-value of the hypercentral language being the highest.
De Swaan has been calculating the Q-values of the official European Union(EU) languages since 1957 to explain the acquisition of languages by EU citizens in different phases.
In 1970, when there were only four language constellations,
Q-value decreased in the order of French, German, Italian, Dutch. In
1975, the European Commission
enlarged to include Britain, Denmark and Ireland. English had the
highest Q-value followed by French and German.
In the following years, the European Commission grew, with the addition
of countries like Austria, Finland and Sweden. Q-value of English still
remained the highest, but French and German swapped places.
In EU23, which refers to the 23 official languages spoken in the European Union, the Q-values for English, German and French were 0.194, 0.045 and 0.036 respectively.
Theoretical framework
De Swaan likens the global language system to contemporary political macrosociology
and states that language constellations are a social phenomenon, which
can be understood by using social science theories. In his theory, de
Swaan uses the Political Sociology of Language and Political Economy of Language to explain the rivalry and accommodation between language groups.
Political sociology
This
theoretical perspective centres on the interconnections among the
state, nation and citizenship. Accordingly, bilingual elite groups try
to take control of the opportunities for mediation between the
monolingual group and the state. Subsequently, they use the official
language to dominate the sectors of government and administration and
the higher levels of employment. It assumes that both the established
and outsider groups are able to communicate in a shared vernacular, but
the latter groups lack the literacy skills that could allow them to
learn the written form of the central or supercentral language, which
would, in turn allow, them to move up the social ladder.
Political economy
This
perspective centres on the inclinations that people have towards
learning one language over the other. The presumption is that if given a
chance, people will learn the language that gives them more
communication advantage. In other words, a higher Q-Value.
Certain languages such as English or Chinese have high Q-values since
they are spoken in many countries across the globe and would thus be
more economically useful than to less spoken languages, such as Romanian
or Hungarian.
From an economic perspective, languages are ‘hypercollective’ goods since they exhibit properties of collective goods
and produce external network effects. Thus, the more speakers a
language has, the higher its communication value for each speaker. The
hypercollective nature and Q-Value
of languages thus help to explain the dilemma that a speaker of a
peripheral language faces when deciding whether to learn the central or
hypercentral language. The hypercollective nature and Q-value also help
to explain the accelerating spread and abandonment of various languages.
In that sense, when people feel that a language is gaining new
speakers, they would assign a greater Q-value to this language and
abandon their own native
language in place of a more central language. The hypercollective
nature and Q-value also explain, in an economic sense, the ethnic and
cultural movements for language conservation.
Specifically, a minimal Q-value of a language is guaranteed when
there is a critical mass of speakers committed to protecting it, thus
preventing the language from being forsaken.
Characteristics
The
global language system theorises that language groups are engaged in
unequal competition on different levels globally. Using the notions of a
periphery, semi-periphery and a core, which are concepts of the world system theory,
de Swaan relates them to the four levels present in the hierarchy of
the global language system: peripheral, central, supercentral and
hypercentral.
De Swaan also argues that the greater the range of potential uses
and users of a language, the higher the tendency of an individual to
move up the hierarchy in the global language system and learn a more
"central" language. Thus, de Swaan views the learning of second languages
as proceeding up rather than down the hierarchy, in the sense that they
learn a language that is on the next level up. For instance, speakers
of Catalan, a peripheral language, have to learn Spanish, a central language to function in their own society, Spain. Meanwhile, speakers of Persian, a central language, have to learn Arabic, a supercentral language, to function in their region. On the other hand, speakers of a supercentral language have to learn the hypercentral language to function globally, as is evident from the huge number of non-native English speakers.
According to de Swaan, languages exist in "constellations" and
the global language system comprises a sociological classification of languages
based on their social role for their speakers. The world's languages
and multilinguals are connected in a strongly ordered, hierarchical
pattern. There are thousands of peripheral or minority languages in the
world, each of which are connected to one of a hundred central
languages. The connections and patterns between each language is what
makes up the global language system. The four levels of language are the
peripheral, central, supercentral and hypercentral languages.
This flowchart depicts the hierarchy of the languages in de Swaan's (2001) global language system theory.
Peripheral languages
At the lowest level, peripheral languages, or minority languages,
form the majority of languages spoken in the world; 98% of the world's
languages are peripheral languages and spoken by less than 10% of the
world’s population. Unlike central languages, these are "languages of
conversation and narration rather than reading and writing, of memory
and remembrance rather than record".
They are used by native speakers within a particular area and are in
danger of becoming extinct with increasing globalisation, which sees
more and more speakers of peripheral languages acquiring more central
languages in order to communicate with others.
Central languages
The
next level constitutes about 100 central languages, spoken by 95% of
the world's population and generally used in education, media and
administration. Typically, they are the 'national' and official languages
of the ruling state. These are the languages of record, and much of
what has been said and written in those languages is saved in newspaper
reports, minutes and proceedings, stored in archives, included in
history books, collections of the 'classics', of folk talks and folk
ways, increasingly recorded on electronic media and thus conserved for
posterity.
Many speakers of central languages are multilingual
because they are either native speakers of a peripheral language and
have acquired the central language, or they are native speakers of the
central language and have learned a supercentral language.
These languages often have colonial traces and "were once imposed
by a colonial power and after independence continued to be used in
politics, administration, law, big business, technology and higher
education".
Hypercentral languages
At the highest level is the language that connects speakers of the supercentral languages. Today, English
is the only example of a hypercentral language as the standard for
science, literature, business, and law, as well as being the most widely
spoken second language.
Applications
Pyramid of languages of the world
This
pyramid illustrates the hierarchy of the world's languages as proposed
by Graddol (1997) in his book, 'The future of English? A guide to
forecasting the popularity of the English language in the 21st century',
published by the British Council.
According to David Graddol (1997), in his book titled The Future of English, the languages of the world comprise a "hierarchical pyramid", as follows:
National languages: around 80 languages serving over 180 nation states.
Official languages within nation states (and other "safe" languages): around 600 languages worldwide (e.g. Marathi).
Local vernacular languages: the remainder of the world's 6,000+ languages.
Translation systems
The
global language system is also seen in the international translation
process as explained by Johan Heilbron, a historical sociologist:
"translations and the manifold activities these imply are embedded in
and dependent on a world system of translation, including both the
source and the target cultures".
The hierarchical relationship between global languages is
reflected in the global system for translations. The more "central" a
language, the greater is its capability to function as a bridge or
vehicular language to facilitate communication between peripheral and
semi-central languages.
Heilbron's version of the global system of language in translations has four levels:
Level 1: Hypercentral position —
English currently holds the largest market share of the global market
for translations; 55–60% of all book translations are from English. It
strongly dominates the hierarchical nature of book translation system.
Level 2: Central position —
German and French each hold 10% of the global translation market.
Level 3: Semi-central position —
There are 7 or 8 languages "neither very central on a global level nor very peripheral", making up 1 to 3% of the world market Each of them or the set of them ?(like Spanish, Italian and Russian).
Level 4: Peripheral position —
Languages from which "less than 1% of the book translations worldwide
are made", including Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Malay, Swahili, Turkish
and Arabic. Despite having large populations of speakers, "their role in
the translation economy is peripheral as compared to more central
languages".
Acceptance
According to the Google Scholar website, de Swaan's book, Words of the world: The global language system, has been cited by 546 other papers, as of 16 October 2014.
However, there have also been several concerns regarding the global language system:
Importance of Q-value
Van Parijs (2004)
claimed that 'frequency' or likelihood of contact is adequate as an
indicator of language learning and language spread. However, de Swaan
(2007) argued that it alone is not sufficient. Rather, the Q-value,
which comprises both frequency (better known as prevalence) and
'centrality', helps to explain the spread of (super)central languages,
especially former colonial languages in newly independent countries
where in which only the elite minority spoke the language initially.
Frequency alone would not be able to explain the spread of such
languages, but Q-value, which includes centrality, would be able to.
In another paper, Cook and Li (2009)
examined the ways to categorise language users into various groups.
They suggested two theories: one by Siegel (2006) who used
'sociolinguistic settings', which is based on the notion of dominant
language, and another one by de Swaan (2001) that used the concept of
hierarchy in the global language system. According to them, de Swaan's
hierarchy is more appropriate, as it does not imply dominance in power
terms. Rather, de Swaan's applies the concepts of geography and function
to group languages and hence language users according to the global
language system. De Swaan (2001) views the acquisition of second languages (L2) as typically going up the hierarchy.
However, Cook and Li argues that this analysis is not adequate in
accounting for the many groups of L2 users to whom the two areas of
territory and function hardly apply. The two areas of territory and
function can be associated respectively with the prevalence and
centrality of the Q-value.
This group of L2 users typically doez not acquire an L2 going up the
hierarchy, such as users in an intercultural marriage or users who come
from a particular cultural or ethnic group and wish to learn its
language for identity purposes. Thus, Cook and Li argue that de Swaan's
theory, though highly relevant, still has its drawbacks in that the
concept behind Q-value is insufficient in accounting for some L2 users.
Choice of supercentral languages
There
is disagreement as to which languages should be considered more
central. The theory states that a language is central if it connects
speakers of "a series of central languages". Robert Phillipson questioned why Japanese is included as one of the supercentral languages but Bengali, which has more speakers, is not on the list.
Inadequate evidence for a system
Michael
Morris argued that while it is clear that there is language hierarchy
from the "ongoing interstate competition and power politics", there is
little evidence provided that shows that the "global language
interaction is so intense and systematic that it constitutes a global
language system, and that the entire system is held together by one global language,
English". He claimed that de Swaan's case studies demonstrated that
hierarchy in different regions of the world but did not show the
existence of a system within a region or across regions. The global
language system is supposed to be part of the international system but
is "notoriously vague and lacking in operational importance" and
therefore cannot be shown to exist. However, Morris believes that this
lack of evidence could be from the lack of global language data and not
negligence on de Swaan's part. Morris also believes that any theory on a
global system, if later proved, would be much more complex than what is
proposed by de Swaan. Questions on how the hypercentral language English holds together the system must also be answered by such a global language system.
Theory built on inadequate foundations
Robert
Phillipson states that the theory is based on selective theoretical
foundations. He claimed that there is a lack of consideration about the
effects of globalization,
which is especially important when the theory is about a global system:
"De Swaan nods occasionally in the direction of linguistic and cultural
capital, but does not link this to class or linguistically defined
social stratification (linguicism) or linguistic inequality" and that "key concepts in the sociology of language, language maintenance and shift, and language spread are scarcely mentioned".
On the other hand, de Swaan's work in the field of
sociolinguistics has been noted by other scholars to be focused on
"issues of economic and political sociology" and "politic and economic patterns", which may explain why he makes only 'cautious references to socio-linguistic parameters".
Birthday Book Printing, the fourth of the six Walk of Ideas sculptures displayed in Berlin during 2006, represents a pile of modern codex books.
The history of the book became an acknowledged academic discipline in
the 1980s, Contributors to the discipline include specialists from the
fields of textual scholarship, codicology, bibliography, philology, palaeography, art history, social history and cultural history.
Its key purpose is to demonstrate that the book as an object, not just
the text contained within it, is a conduit of interaction between
readers and words.
Prior to the evolution of the printing press, made famous by the Gutenberg Bible,
each text was a unique hand crafted article, personalized through the
design features incorporated by the scribe, owner, bookbinder and
illustrator.
Analysis of each component part of the book reveals its purpose, where
and how it was kept, who read it, ideological and religious beliefs of
the period and whether readers interacted with the text within. Even a
lack of evidence of this nature leaves valuable clues about the nature
of that particular book.
Origins
The history of the book became an acknowledged academic discipline in the latter half of the 20th century. It was fostered by William Ivins Jr.'s Prints and Visual Communication (1953) and Henri-Jean Martin and Lucien Febvre's L'apparition du livre (The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450–1800) in 1958 as well as Marshall McLuhan's Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962). Another notable pioneer in the History of the Book is Robert Darnton.
Chronology
The history of the book starts with the development of writing, and various other inventions such as paper and printing, and continues through to the modern day business of book printing.
The earliest history of books actually predates what would
conventionally be called "books" today and begins with tablets, scrolls,
and sheets of papyrus. Then hand-bound, expensive, and elaborate manuscripts known as codices appeared. These gave way to press-printed
volumes and eventually lead to the mass printed tomes prevalent today.
Contemporary books may even have no physical presence with the advent of
the e-book. The book also became more accessible to the disabled with the advent of Braille and spoken books.
Clay tablets were used in Mesopotamia
in the 3rd millennium BC. The calamus, an instrument in the form of a
triangle, was used to make characters in moist clay. People used to use
fire to dry the tablets out. At Nineveh, over 20,000 tablets were found, dating from the 7th century BC; this was the archive and library of the kings of Assyria,
who had workshops of copyists and conservationists at their disposal.
This presupposes a degree of organization with respect to books,
consideration given to conservation, classification, etc. Tablets were
used right up until the 19th century in various parts of the world,
including Germany, Chile, Philippines and the Saharan Desert.
Cuneiform and Sumerian Writing
Writing originated as a form of record keeping in Sumer during the fourth millennium BCE with the advent of cuneiform.
Many clay tablets have been found that show cuneiform writing used to
record legal contracts, create lists of assets, and eventually to record
Sumerian literature and myths. Scribal schools have been found by
archaeologists from as early as the second millennium BCE where students
were taught the art of writing.
Papyrus
Egyptian Papyrus
After extracting the marrow from the stems of Papyrus reed, a
series of steps (humidification, pressing, drying, gluing, and cutting)
produced media of variable quality, the best being used for sacred
writing. In Ancient Egypt, papyrus was used as a medium for writing surfaces, maybe as early as from First Dynasty, but first evidence is from the account books of King Neferirkare Kakai of the Fifth Dynasty (about 2400 BC). A calamus, the stem of a reed sharpened to a point, or bird feathers were used for writing. The script of Egyptian scribes was called hieratic, or sacerdotal writing; it is not hieroglyphic,
but a simplified form more adapted to manuscript writing (hieroglyphs
usually being engraved or painted). Egyptians exported papyrus to other
Mediterranean civilizations including Greece and Rome where it was used
until parchment was developed.
Papyrus books were in the form of a scroll of several sheets pasted together, for a total length of 10 meters or more. Some books, such as the history of the reign of Ramses III,
were over 40 meters long. Books rolled out horizontally; the text
occupied one side, and was divided into columns. The title was indicated
by a label attached to the cylinder containing the book. Many papyrus
texts come from tombs, where prayers and sacred texts were deposited
(such as the Book of the Dead, from the early 2nd millennium BC).
East Asia
A Chinese bamboo book
Before the introduction of books, writing on bone, shells, wood and silk was prevalent in China long before the 2nd century BC, until paper
was invented in China around the 1st century AD. China's first
recognizable books, called jiance or jiandu, were made of rolls of thin
split and dried bamboo bound together with hemp, silk, or leather. The discovery of the process using the bark of the blackberry bush to create paper is attributed to Ts'ai Lun (the cousin of Kar-Shun), but it may be older. Texts were reproduced by woodblock printing;
the diffusion of Buddhist texts was a main impetus to large-scale
production. The format of the book evolved with intermediate stages of
scrolls folded concertina-style, scrolls bound at one edge ("butterfly books") and so on.
Although there is no exact date known, between 618 and 907 AD–The
period of the Tang Dynasty–the first printing of books started in
China. The oldest extant printed book is a work of the Diamond Sutra and dates back to 868 AD, during the Tang Dynasty. The Diamond Sutra was printed by method of woodblock printing,
a strenuous method in which the text to be printed would be carved into
a woodblock's surface, essentially to be used to stamp the words onto
the writing surface medium.
Woodblock printing was a common process for the reproduction of already
handwritten texts during the earliest stages of book printing. This
process was incredibly time-consuming.
Because of the meticulous and time-consuming process that woodblock printing was, Bi Sheng, a key contributor to the history of printing, invented the process of movable type printing (1041-1048 AD).
Bi Sheng developed a printing process in which written text could be
copied with the use of formed character types, the earliest types being
made of ceramic or clay material. The method of movable type printing would later become improved by Johannes Gutenberg.
Japan
Early
seventeenth century Japan saw a large amount of extremely detail
oriented text being produced. For instance, Hitomi Hitsudai spent thirty
years taking field notes on 492 types of edible flowers and animals in
his book Honcho shokkan(The Culinary Mirror of the Realm).
This overly detailed style of writing was characteristic of the years
prior, when the majority of literate people were of higher classes. Soon
after, literacy rates began to increase as hundreds(by some accounts
thousands) of schools taught children the vocabulary of geography,
history, and individual crafts and callings.
The highly detailed style still persisted as it was consistent in many
gazetteers, emerging as a social lexicon. In some instances family
almanacs and encyclopedias were put together regionally.
While the highly detailed writing form persisted, a simpler
reading style developed in the 1670s that were written for popular
readership. It was characterized by a simpler vernacular language,
written almost directly for first time book buyers. These original tales
of fiction were popular among common samurai as well common
townspeople. Works went beyond stories of fiction, but also would depict
certain crafts and manuals specialized for that topic.
The writing of these more popularized books was a newly emerging form
of script. Authors had, for the first time, to deal with the idea of the
“reading public” for the first time. Authors took into account the
differing social stratas of their audience and had to learn “the common
forms of reference that made the words and images of a text
intelligible” to the layman.
Authors had reached a new market with their more simplistic
writing. After passing this hurdle, they began writing about more than
specified crafts and social lexicons. For the first time, writers had
opened the power to make once private knowledge public and moved into
more regional information guides.
Yet still, the detail oriented writing persisted as writing became
understand as something that needed to be “quantitative evidence in
order to measure continuity against change.”
The increasing literacy across Japan as well as the proliferation of
authors made writing a semi-autonomous system, but there were still
instances of censorship in the late seventeenth century. Despite the
vast depiction of landscape, governmental powers ensured areas that
entailed sensitive subjects, such as military households, foreign
affairs, Christianity and other heterodox beliefs, and disturbing
current events, were kept out of public works. This self censorship did
have drawbacks as social commentary stayed in the higher social caste
where this information was more readily available.
Despite these censors, public readings increased across Japan and
created new markets that could be shared between the higher elites as
well as middlebrow peoples, albeit differing subject matter.
In Mesoamerica, information was recorded on long strips of paper,
agave fibers, or animal hides, which were then folded and protected by
wooden covers. These were thought to have existed since the time of the
Classical Period between the 3rd and 8th centuries, CE. Many of these
codices were thought to contain astrological information, religious
calendars, knowledge about the gods, genealogies of the rulers,
cartographic information, and tribute collection. Many of these codices
were stored in temples but were ultimately destroyed by the Spanish
explorers.
Currently, the only completely deciphered pre-Columbian writing system is the Maya script. The Maya, along with several other cultures in Mesoamerica, constructed concertina-style books written on Amate paper. Nearly all Mayan texts were destroyed by the Spanish during colonization on cultural and religious grounds. One of the few surviving examples is the Dresden Codex.
Although only the Maya have been shown to have a writing system
capable of conveying any concept that can be conveyed via speech (at
about the same level as the modern Japanese writing system), other Mesoamerican cultures had more rudimentary ideographical writing systems which were contained in similar concertina-style books, one such example being the Aztec codices.
Florentine Codex
There
are more than 2,000 illustrations drawn by native artists that
represent this era. Bernardino de Sahagun tells the story of Aztec
people's lives and their natural history. The Florentine Codex speaks
about the culture religious cosmology and ritual practices, society,
economics, and natural history of the Aztec people. The manuscript are
arranged in both the Nahuatl language and in Spanish. The English
translation of the complete Nahuatl text of all twelve volumes of the
Florentine Codex took ten years. Arthur J.O. Anderson and Charles Dibble
had a decade of long work but made it an important contribution to
Mesoamerican ethnohistory. Years later, in 1979, the Mexican government
published a full-color volume of the Florentine Codex. Now, since 2012,
it is available digitally and fully accessible to those interested in
Mexican and Aztec History.
The Florentine Codex is a 16th-century ethnographic research
study brought about by the Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de
Sahagun. The codex itself was actually named La Historia Universal de las Cosas de Nueva España.
Bernardino de Sahagun worked on this project from 1545 up until his
death in 1590. The Florentine Codex consist of twelve books. It is 2400
pages long but divided into the twelve books by categories such as; The
Gods, Ceremonies, Omens, and other cultural aspects of Aztec people.
Wax tablets
Woman holding wax tablets in the form of the codex. Wall painting from Pompeii, before 79 AD.
Romans used wax-coated wooden tablets or pugillares upon which they could write and erase by using a stylus.
One end of the stylus was pointed, and the other was spherical. Usually
these tablets were used for everyday purposes (accounting, notes) and
for teaching writing to children, according to the methods discussed by Quintilian in his Institutio Oratoria
X Chapter 3. Several of these tablets could be assembled in a form
similar to a codex. Also the etymology of the word codex (block of wood)
suggest that it may have developed from wooden wax tablets.
Parchment
Parchment progressively replaced papyrus. Legend attributes its invention to Eumenes II, the king of Pergamon,
from which comes the name "pergamineum," which became "parchment." Its
production began around the 3rd century BC. Made using the skins of
animals (sheep, cattle, donkey, antelope, etc.), parchment proved to be
easier to conserve over time; it was more solid, and allowed one to
erase text. It was a very expensive medium because of the rarity of
material and the time required to produce a document. Vellum is the finest quality of parchment.
Greece and Rome
The
scroll of papyrus is called "volumen" in Latin, a word which signifies
"circular movement," "roll," "spiral," "whirlpool," "revolution"
(similar, perhaps, to the modern English interpretation of "swirl") and
finally "a roll of writing paper, a rolled manuscript, or a book."
In the 7th century Isidore of Seville explains the relation between codex, book and scroll in his Etymologiae (VI.13) as this:
A codex is composed of many books (librorum); a book is of one scroll (voluminis). It is called codex by way of metaphor from the trunks (caudex) of trees or vines, as if it were a wooden stock, because it contains in itself a multitude of books, as it were of branches.
Description
The
scroll is rolled around two vertical wooden axes. This design allows
only sequential usage; one is obliged to read the text in the order in
which it is written, and it is impossible to place a marker in order to
directly access a precise point in the text. It is comparable to modern
video cassettes. Moreover, the reader must use both hands to hold on to
the vertical wooden rolls and therefore cannot read and write at the
same time. The only volumen in common usage today is the Jewish Torah.
Book culture
The authors of Antiquity
had no rights concerning their published works; there were neither
authors' nor publishing rights. Anyone could have a text recopied, and
even alter its contents. Scribes earned money and authors earned mostly
glory, unless a patron provided cash; a book made its author famous.
This followed the traditional conception of the culture: an author stuck
to several models, which he imitated and attempted to improve. The
status of the author was not regarded as absolutely personal.
From a political and religious point of view, books were censored very early: the works of Protagoras were burned because he was a proponent of agnosticism
and argued that one could not know whether or not the gods existed.
Generally, cultural conflicts led to important periods of book
destruction: in 303, the emperor Diocletian ordered the burning of Christian texts. Some Christians
later burned libraries, and especially heretical or non-canonical
Christian texts. These practices are found throughout human history but
have ended in many nations today. A few nations today still greatly
censor and even burn books.
But there also exists a less visible but nonetheless effective
form of censorship when books are reserved for the elite; the book was
not originally a medium for expressive liberty. It may serve to confirm
the values of a political system, as during the reign of the emperor Augustus,
who skillfully surrounded himself with great authors. This is a good
ancient example of the control of the media by a political power.
However, private and public censorship have continued into the modern
era, albeit in various forms.
Proliferation and conservation of books in Greece
Little information concerning books in Ancient Greece
survives. Several vases (6th and 5th centuries BC) bear images of
volumina. There was undoubtedly no extensive trade in books, but there
existed several sites devoted to the sale of books.
The spread of books, and attention to their cataloging and conservation, as well as literary criticism developed during the Hellenistic period with the creation of large libraries in response to the desire for knowledge exemplified by Aristotle. These libraries were undoubtedly also built as demonstrations of political prestige:
The Library of Alexandria, a library created by Ptolemy Soter and set up by Demetrius Phalereus (Demetrius of Phaleron). It contained 500,900 volumes (in the Museion section) and 40,000 at the Serapis temple (Serapeion).
All books in the luggage of visitors to Egypt were inspected, and could
be held for copying. The Museion was partially destroyed in 47 BC.
The Library at Pergamon, founded by Attalus I; it contained 200,000 volumes which were moved to the Serapeion by Mark Antony and Cleopatra,
after the destruction of the Museion. The Serapeion was partially
destroyed in 391, and the last books disappeared in 641 CE following the
Arab conquest.
Literary criticisms in order to establish reference texts for the copy (example : The Iliad and The Odyssey)
A catalog of books
The copy itself, which allowed books to be disseminated
Book production in Rome
Book production developed in Rome
in the 1st century BC with Latin literature that had been influenced by
the Greek. Conservative estimates places the number of potential
readers in Imperial Rome at around 100,000 people.
This diffusion primarily concerned circles of literary individuals. Atticus was the editor of his friend Cicero. However, the book business progressively extended itself through the Roman Empire; for example, there were bookstores in Lyon. The spread of the book was aided by the extension of the Empire, which implied the imposition of the Latin tongue on a great number of people (in Spain, Africa, etc.).
Libraries were private or created at the behest of an individual. Julius Caesar, for example, wanted to establish one in Rome, proving that libraries were signs of political prestige.
In the year 377, there were 28 libraries in Rome, and it is known
that there were many smaller libraries in other cities. Despite the
great distribution of books, scientists do not have a complete picture
as to the literary scene in antiquity as thousands of books have been
lost through time.
Paper
Papermaking has traditionally been traced to China about AD 105, when Cai Lun, an official attached to the Imperial court during the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD), created a sheet of paper using mulberry and other bast fibres along with fishnets, old rags, and hemp waste.
While paper used for wrapping and padding was used in China since the 2nd century BC, paper used as a writing medium only became widespread by the 3rd century. By the 6th century in China, sheets of paper were beginning to be used for toilet paper as well. During the Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD) paper was folded and sewn into square bags to preserve the flavor of tea. The Song Dynasty (960–1279) that followed was the first government to issue paper currency.
An important development was the mechanization of paper manufacture by medieval papermakers. The introduction of water-powered paper mills, the first certain evidence of which dates to the 11th century in Córdoba, Spain, allowed for a massive expansion of production and replaced the laborious handcraft characteristic of both Chinese and Muslim
papermaking. Papermaking centres began to multiply in the late 13th
century in Italy, reducing the price of paper to one sixth of parchment and then falling further.
By the end of antiquity, between the 2nd and 4th centuries, the scroll
was replaced by the codex. The book was no longer a continuous roll,
but a collection of sheets attached at the back. It became possible to
access a precise point in the text quickly. The codex is equally easy to
rest on a table, which permits the reader to take notes while he or she
is reading. The codex form improved with the separation of words,
capital letters, and punctuation, which permitted silent reading. Tables
of contents and indices facilitated direct access to information. This
form was so effective that it is still the standard book form, over 1500
years after its appearance.
Paper would progressively replace parchment. Cheaper to produce, it allowed a greater diffusion of books.
Books in monasteries
A number of Christian books were destroyed at the order of Diocletian
in 304 AD. During the turbulent periods of the invasions, it was the
monasteries that conserved religious texts and certain works of Antiquity for the West. But there would also be important copying centers in Byzantium.
The role of monasteries in the conservation of books is not without some ambiguity:
Reading was an important activity in the lives of monks, which
can be divided into prayer, intellectual work, and manual labor (in the Benedictine
order, for example). It was therefore necessary to make copies of
certain works. Accordingly, there existed scriptoria (the plural of
scriptorium) in many monasteries, where monks copied and decorated
manuscripts that had been preserved.
However, the conservation of books was not exclusively in order to
preserve ancient culture; it was especially relevant to understanding
religious texts with the aid of ancient knowledge. Some works were never
recopied, having been judged too dangerous for the monks. Moreover, in
need of blank media, the monks scraped off manuscripts, thereby
destroying ancient works. The transmission of knowledge was centered
primarily on sacred texts.
Copying and conserving books
An author portrait of Jean Miélot writing his compilation of the Miracles of Our Lady, one of his many popular works.
Despite this ambiguity, monasteries in the West and the Eastern
Empire permitted the conservation of a certain number of secular texts,
and several libraries were created: for example, Cassiodorus ('Vivarum' in Calabria, around 550), or Constantine I in Constantinople.
There were several libraries, but the survival of books often depended
on political battles and ideologies, which sometimes entailed massive
destruction of books or difficulties in production (for example, the
distribution of books during the Iconoclasm between 730 and 842). A long list of very old and surviving libraries that now form part of the Vatican Archives can be found in the Catholic Encyclopedia.
To help preserve books and protect them from thieves, librarians would create chained libraries,
which consisted of books attached to cabinets or desks with metal
chains. This eliminated unauthorised removal of books. One of the
earliest chained libraries was in England during the 1500s. Popular
culture also has examples of chained libraries, such as in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K Rowling.
The scriptorium
The
scriptorium was the workroom of monk copyists; here, books were copied,
decorated, rebound, and conserved. The armarius directed the work and
played the role of librarian.
The role of the copyist was multifaceted: for example, thanks to
their work, texts circulated from one monastery to another. Copies also
allowed monks to learn texts and to perfect their religious education.
The relationship with the book thus defined itself according to an
intellectual relationship with God. But if these copies were sometimes made for the monks themselves, there were also copies made on demand.
The task of copying itself had several phases: the preparation of
the manuscript in the form of notebooks once the work was complete, the
presentation of pages, the copying itself, revision, correction of
errors, decoration, and binding. The book therefore required a variety of competencies, which often made a manuscript a collective effort.
Transformation from the literary edition in the 12th century
The scene in Botticelli's Madonna of the Book (1480) reflects the presence of books in the houses of richer people in his time.
The revival of cities in Europe would change the conditions of book
production and extend its influence, and the monastic period of the book
would come to an end. This revival accompanied the intellectual
renaissance of the period. The Manuscript culture
outside of the monastery developed in these university-cities in Europe
in this time. It is around the first universities that new structures
of production developed: reference manuscripts were used by students and
professors for teaching theology
and liberal arts. The development of commerce and of the bourgeoisie
brought with it a demand for specialized and general texts (law,
history, novels, etc.). It is in this period that writing in the common
vernacular developed (courtly poetry, novels, etc.). Commercial
scriptoria became common, and the profession of book seller came into
being, sometimes dealing internationally.
There is also the creation of royal libraries as in the case of Saint Louis and Charles V. Books were also collected in private libraries, which became more common in the 14th and 15th centuries.
The use of paper diffused through Europe in the 14th century. This material, less expensive than parchment, came from China via the Arabs
in Spain in the 11th and 12th centuries. It was used in particular for
ordinary copies, while parchment was used for luxury editions.
Printing press
The invention of the moveable type on the printing press by Johann Fust, Peter Schoffer and Johannes Gutenberg
around 1440 marks the entry of the book into the industrial age. The
Western book was no longer a single object, written or reproduced by
request. The publication of a book became an enterprise, requiring
capital for its realization and a market for its distribution. The cost
of each individual book (in a large edition) was lowered enormously,
which in turn increased the distribution of books. The book in codex
form and printed on paper, as we know it today, dates from the 15th
century. Books printed before January 1, 1501, are called incunables. The spreading of book printing all over Europe occurred relatively quickly, but most books were still printed in Latin. The spreading of the concept of printing books in the vernacular was a somewhat slower process.
List of notable printing milestones
Jikji, Selected Teachings of Buddhist Sages and Seon Masters, the earliest known book printed with movable metal type, 1377. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.
1377: Jikji
is known to be the first printed book using movable metal print
technology by Koryo (Korea). Jikji is abbreviated title of a Korean
Buddhist document, Selected Teachings of Buddhist Sages and Seon Masters.
1476: La légende dorée printed by Guillaume LeRoy, the first book printed in the French language.
1476: Aristotle's De Animalibus,
the first printed compilation of works on biology, (translated from the
Greek) was printed in Venice, the basis of medical education for 1600
years prior: not to be confused with Albertus Magnus's version, translated from Arabic by Michael Scot.
1476: Grammatica Graeca, sive compendium octo orationis partium, probably the first book entirely in Greek, by Constantine Lascaris.
1477: The first printed edition of Geographia by Ptolemy, probably in 1477 in Bologna, was also the first printed book with engraved illustrations.
1497: "Constituições que fez o Senhor Dom Diogo de Sousa, Bispo do Porto", first book printed in the Portuguese language, by the first Portuguese printer, Rodrigo Álvares, in Porto, on January the 4th.
1499: Catholicon, Breton-French-Latin dictionary, first printed trilingual dictionary, first Breton book, first French dictionary
1561: The first printed books in the Romanian language, Tetraevanghelul and Întrebare creştinească (also known as Catehismul) are printed by Coresi in Braşov.
1564: The first book in Irish was printed in Edinburgh, a translation of John Knox's 'Liturgy' by John Carswell, Bishop of the Hebrides.
1571: The first book in Irish to be printed in Ireland was a Protestant catechism (Aibidil Gaoidheilge agus Caiticiosma), containing a guide to spelling and sounds in Irish.
1577: Lekah Tov, a commentary on the Book of Esther, was the first book printed in what is now Israel
1802: New South Wales General Standing Orders was the first book printed in Australia, comprising Government and General Orders issued between 1791 and 1802
2005 - it may not cover only printed books (but mainly), the number of International Standard Book Number (ISBN) was nearly run out in 10 digit form. The numbers were changed to 13 digits ISBN.
2010 - According to Google there were 129864880 Books in the entire World.
The
Late Modern Period saw a lot of development in the types of books being
circulated. Chapbooks - short works on cheap paper - were targeted
towards lower-class readers and featured a diverse range of subjects.
Everything from myth and fairy tales to practical and medical advice and
prayers contributed to a steady demand that helped spread literacy
among the lower-classes. Literacy was in general on the rise, with a
near universal literacy rate in Western Europe, Australia and the United
States of America by 1890, with the inequality between men and women's
literacy starting to equalize by 1900.
The printing press became increasingly mechanized. Early designs
for metal and steam-powered printing presses were introduced in the
early 19th century by inventors like Friederich Koenig and Charles
Stanhope. However they became widely adopted by the 1830s, particularly
by newspapers such as the London Times. Around the same time a
revolution was triggered in paper production by Henry Fourdrinier and
Thomas Gilpin, whose new paper making machines output very wide
continuous rolls of paper. The only bottleneck to book production was
the time-consuming process of composition. This was eventually solved by
Ottmar Mergenthaler and Tolbert Lanston who produced the Linotype and
Monotype machines respectively. With these barriers removed book
production exploded.
Great strides began in the realm of publishing as authors began
to enjoy early forms of Copyright protection. The Statute of Anne was
passed in 1710, establishing basic rights for the author's intellectual
property. This was superseded by the Copyright Act of 1814 which
transferred sole rights to a print work for twenty eight years after
publication. This was extended in 1842 to the author's lifetime plus
seven years, or forty two years after first publication.
During the Enlightenment
more books began to pour off European presses, creating an early form
of information overload for many readers. Nowhere was this more the case
than in Enlightenment Scotland, where students were exposed to a wide
variety of books during their education. The demands of the British and Foreign Bible Society (founded 1804), the American Bible Society
(founded 1816), and other non-denominational publishers for enormously
large inexpensive runs of texts led to numerous innovations. The
introduction of steam printing presses a little before 1820, closely
followed by new steam paper mills, constituted the two most major
innovations. Together, they caused book prices to drop and the number of
books to increase considerably. Numerous bibliographic features, like
the positioning and formulation of titles and subtitles, were also
affected by this new production method. New types of documents appeared
later in the 19th century: photography, sound recording and film.
Contemporary Period
Typewriters and eventually computer based word processors and printers let people print and put together their own documents. Desktop publishing is common in the 21st century.
Among a series of developments that occurred in the 1990s, the
spread of digital multimedia, which encodes texts, images, animations,
and sounds in a unique and simple form was notable for the book
publishing industry. Hypertext further improved access to information. Finally, the internet lowered production and distribution costs.
E-books and the future of the book
It is difficult to predict the future of the book in an era of fast-paced technological change.
Anxieties about the "death of books" have been expressed throughout the
history of the medium, perceived as threatened by competing media such
as radio, television, and the Internet.
However, these views are generally exaggerated, and "dominated by
fetishism, fears about the end of humanism and ideas of
techno-fundamentalist progress". The print book medium has proven to be very resilient and adaptable.
A good deal of reference material, designed for direct access instead of sequential reading, as for example encyclopedias,
exists less and less in the form of books and increasingly on the web.
Leisure reading materials are increasingly published in e-reader
formats.
Although electronic books, or e-books, had limited success in the
early years, and readers were resistant at the outset, the demand for
books in this format has grown dramatically, primarily because of the
popularity of e-reader devices and as the number of available titles in
this format has increased. Since the Amazon Kindle
was released in 2007, the e-book has become a digital phenomenon and
many theorize that it will take over hardback and paper books in future.
E-books are much more accessible and easier to buy and it's also
cheaper to purchase an E-Book rather than its physical counterpart due
to paper expenses being deducted.
Another important factor in the increasing popularity of the e-reader
is its continuous diversification. Many e-readers now support basic
operating systems, which facilitate email and other simple functions.
The iPad is the most obvious example of this trend, but even mobile phones can host e-reading software.
Reading for the blind
Braille
is a system of reading and writing through the use of the finger tips.
Braille was developed as a system of efficient communication for blind
and partially blind alike.
The system consists of sixty-three characters and is read left to
right. These characters are made with small raised dots in two columns
similar to a modern domino piece to represent each letter.
Readers can identify characters with two fingers. Reading speed
averages one hundred and twenty-five words per minute and can reach two
hundred words per minute.
The making of Braille
Braille was named after its creator Louis Braille in 1824 in France. Braille stabbed himself in the eyes at the age of three with his father's leather working tools. Braille spent nine years working on a previous system of communication called night writing by Charles Barbier. Braille published his book "procedure for writing words, music, and plainsong in dots", in 1829. In 1854 France made Braille the "official communication system for blind individuals". Valentin Haüy was the first person to put Braille on paper in the form of a book. In 1932 Braille became accepted and used in English speaking countries.
In 1965 the Nemeth Code of Braille Mathematics and Scientific Notation
was created. The code was developed to assign symbols to advanced
mathematical notations and operations. The system has remained the same, only minor adjustments have been made to it since its creation.
Spoken books
The
spoken book was originally created in the 1930s to provide the blind
and visually impaired with a medium to enjoy books. In 1932 the American Foundation for the Blind created the first recordings of spoken books on vinyl records. In 1935, a British-based foundation, Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB), was the first to deliver talking books to the blind on vinyl records. Each record contained about thirty minutes of audio on both sides, and the records were played on a gramophone. Spoken books changed mediums in the 1960s with the transition from vinyl records to cassette tapes.
The next progression of spoken books came in the 1980s with the
widespread use of compact discs. Compact discs reached more people and
made it possible to listen to books in the car. In 1995 the term audiobook became the industry standard.
Finally, the internet enabled audiobooks to become more accessible and
portable. Audiobooks could now be played in their entirety instead of
being split onto multiple disks.
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