Text Formats: Incunable Leaf, Early Modern Book, Paperback, Microfilm

By the 15th century, written information had undergone several changes. Pulp papermaking was introduced to Europe from China in the 11th century. In the 13th and 14th centuries, papermaking was industrialized using mills that lowered the price of paper well below that of parchment. The advent of Gutenberg’s printing press using movable type in the 1450s similarly reduced the amount of time and labor involved in producing texts. A book that might have taken a scribe months or years of labor could be easily produced by a printing press in days or weeks. Suddenly, the “written word” was less expensive and more broadly accessible. Today, 15th century printed works are known as incunables, based on the Latin term for “cradle”. By the 16th century, the production of printed books exploded. Displayed here are examples of a leaf from an incunable and an early modern work. In the continued pursuit of making books more accessible, publishers introduced paperback books with lightweight covers instead of harder boards and were bound using glue instead of being sewn. The introduction of Penguin Books paperback editions in 1935 and Pocket Books in 1939 helped to standardize the format and gain a significant portion of the book market. 

While paperbacks are more portable than hardcover books, the density of textual information is limited by printing technology and the human eye’s ability to read small print. Miniature books have long been produced as examples of technological miniaturization and printers’ skills, but they are not broadly practical. This changed with advances in photography and projection technology. The concept of microphotography dates to the mid-19th century, soon after the invention of photography, but microfilm did not become common until the Eastman Kodak Company began marketing their Recordak devices in 1928. Libraries quickly adopted the process and began to create microfilm versions of their books and manuscripts for easier storage and preservation. Another popular application of microfilm was in preserving newspapers, with Kodak creating 35 millimeter microfilm reels of the New York Times in 1935. Lehigh Libraries maintains millions of pages of newspapers available as microfilm and modern newspapers continue to be converted to microfilm today.