| 1455-
|
Johannes
Gutenberg develops a printing press with movable type.
The technology enables the manufacture of high-quality
printed works at a fraction the cost of hand copying.
The first book produced by Gutenberg's printing press is
the "Gutenberg" 42-line Bible.
|
| 1490-
|
Aldus
Manutius founds the Aldine Press in Venice.
|
| 1570-
|
Abraham
Ortelius produces the first modern atlas, Theatrum
Orbis Terrarum. Recently, the mapbook became an
eBook when the Library of Congress American Memory
Project digitized the 70 maps and presented them on the
web. |
| 1720-
|
Alexander
Pope becomes the first overpaid author, earning a 5,000L
fortune for his translation of the Iliad.
|
| 1840-
|
Wood pulp
paper is produced commercially for the first time.
|
| 1883-
|
Tolbert
Lanston creates the first mechanical typesetting
machine, called monotype. Previous to his invention,
typesetting was done by hand at a rate of about 2,000
letters per hour. With monotype, letters were set at
6,000 per hour. |
| 1938-
|
H.G. Wells
writes World Brain. The World Brain is Wells'
vision of a vast print encyclopedia of all human
knowledge whose production company would become a new
institution for knowledge and education.
|
| 1945-
|
Vannevar Bush
writes the essay, As We May Think, which
describes a device called the 'memex'. The memex is the
size of a desk, stores books and other materials on
microfilm, and has the ability to link and connect
passages among documents. |
| 1965-
|
Ted Nelson
coins the term 'hypertext'. Later he writes about his
utopian project Xanadu in which all the works of
the world are permanently stored in a universally
accessible repository. |
| 1965-
|
Media prophet
Marshall McLuhan predicts the coming impact and
potential profit of the merging of electronics and
books. |
| 1968-
|
Alan Kay
creates a cardboard model of the Dynabook, a computer
with a million-pixel screen. Kay calls the visionary
device "something more like superpaper."
|
| 1971-
|
Michael Hart
types the Declaration of Independence at the University
of Illinois. So begins Project Gutenberg, a free
computer classics library. Today the Gutenberg
collection totals 2,000 works. |
| 1979-
|
Doug Adams
releases the popular science fiction novel, The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which
protagonist Ford Prefect researches the galaxy for a
vast electronic book called The Hitchhiker's
Guide. |
| 1981-
|
The Random
House Electronic Thesaurus is arguably the world's
first commercially available "electronic book."
|
| 1986-
|
Franklin
Electronic Publishers embeds an electronic dictionary in
a handheld device, producing the first portable eBook.
|
| 1990-
|
Barnes &
Noble opens its first superstore. |
| 1991-
|
Sony's Data
Discman is designed to display CD-ROM books on a
3.5-inch screen. |
| 1995-
|
Amazon.com
begins selling print books on the web.
|
| 2000-
|
Availability
of Microsoft Reader with ClearType™ launches a
new era of reading on screen. |
