History of Writing & Printing:

newsmaven.io ^ | 8/24/2019 | Bill Federer

[bitt]

Victor Hugo on Gutenberg's Press, "The Invention of Printing ... is the Mother of Revolution."

HISTORY OF WRITING

The invention of "writing" was around 3300 BC.

Richard Overy, editor of The Times Complete History of the World, stated in "The 50 Key Dates of World History" (October 19, 2007):

"No date appears before the start of human civilizations about 5,500 years ago and the beginning of a written or pictorial history."

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson stated in the Cosmos TV series (2014, natgeotv.com, episode 10, "The Immortals"):

"It was the people who once lived here, around 5,000 years ago, who first started chopping up time into smaller bite-size portions of hours and minutes. They call this place Uruk. We call it Iraq.

The part of Mesopotamia - the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The 'city' was invented here.

And one of humanities greatest victories was won over the ceaseless battle of time. It was here that we learned how to write."

Writing was first on pieces of clay, then on papyrus reeds from the Nile Delta.

The reeds, which grew 16 feet tall, had their outer rind removed, leaving the sticky inner cores, which were cut into strips, interwoven together, soaked, pressed, and then dried.

The word "paper" comes from the word "papyrus."

It was the main medium to write upon for nearly 3,000 years.

Writing was invented in China around 2,600 BC during the reign of the legendary Yellow Emperor.

Instead of using reeds, the Chinese used bamboo, which was cut into strips and written upon vertically.

These strips were tied together creating bamboo annals or books.

Around the same time, writing appeared in the Harappan civilization along the Indus River Valley in Punjab and Sindh.

Harappan writing has never been deciphered...

[bitt]

p

[wally_bert]

I despise printers.

[yarddog]

I think writing in Crete is just as old as Egypt.

Much of it still undecipherable tho it is kin to Greek.

[dfwgator]

"It's a Miracle!"

[yarddog]

When I was in grad school starting in 1988, The department bought a “digitizer” which we now call a scanner. It would only reproduce in black and white. It cost $5000.00.

Just last week, I bought a combination scanner and printer for $19.00 at Walmart. It was a Canon and included both a color and b&w cartridge.

It scans far, far better than that $5000.00 one. Colors plus much more detail.

[MV=PY]

Thanks for posting, a good read!

It’ll be easy to see which posters actually click on the link and read it.

[Fungi]

And today's TVs are a lot better too, along with almost everything else, except in the political, religious, and moral realm, we have gone down hill. : “But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” (Daniel 12:4)

[coaster123]

The first word was, no doubt, written in all caps.

[frank ballenger]

Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them. Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body. ‎Ecclesiastes 12:12 NIV / / / / / And of the making of FR posts there is no end --and that's a good thing.

[null and void]

DID YOU MEAN:

THE FIRST WORD WAS, NO DOUBT, WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS.

HMMMM?

[SunkenCiv]

In her Plato Prehistorian: 10,000 to 5000 B.C. Myth, Religion, Archaeology, Mary Settegast reproduces a table which shows four runic character sets; a is Upper Paleolithic (found among the cave paintings), b is Indus Valley script, c is Greek (western branch), and d is the Scandinavian runic alphabet.

[frank ballenger]

The guy in the Wedding Singer bought the new invention called a CD player for $700 but it had great sound.

But I’m the opposite, a late adopter. I have a landline phone and add minutes to a Tracfone to avoid the cellphones. I use the save money to buy printed books and magazines.

[Bob Ireland]

***The first word was, no doubt, written in all caps***

The first spoken words were undoubtedly, Do you come here often? ... not in English, of course.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

Interesting. BFL

[morphing libertarian]

Rulers controlled knowledge and communication throughout history: ​Islam's burning of libraries and forbidding followers to read the Bible; Medieval feudal lords and clergy communicated only in Latin; banning and burning of books during Reformation, Jewish pogroms, National Socialist Workers Party (Nazi), Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Erdogan's Turkish government, etc.; confiscation of printing presses; during Revolution, Britain's Writs of Assistance whereby British agents read all correspondence; more recently, attempts to restrict talk radio; and censor the internet. Thomas Aquinas wrote of Mohammed in Summa contra Gentiles, 1258: ​"It was a shrewd decision on his part to forbid his followers to read the Old and New Testaments, lest these books convict him of falsity."

[SteveH]

aha! the lists are all missing the “hooked X”! (a conspiracy, no doubt!!)

:)

[Tucker39]

In the Army Security Agency we used cryptology among other things. There is a cryptology museum at Ft. Meade, MD. Early computers were used in cryptology. There is a 6 ton computer on display there. The attached placcard says, “The smart phone in your pocket is a far more powerful computer than this one which weighs 6 tons”.

[Bigg Red]

Mark

[SunkenCiv]

Heh... IMHO, Scott really went around the bend on that one.