From the History of Books

What is a book? Part matter and part spirit; part thing and part thought – however you look at it; you can hardly give a definition. The book is a vehicle of learning and enlightenment, an open door to countless joys and sorrows. At a touch our book opens and we slip into a silent world – to visit foreign shores, to discover hidden treasure, to travel among the stars.

China gave us paper. Phoenicia brought forth our alphabet. The format of the book we took from Rome, to Germany we owe the art of printing. Britain and the United States perfected book production. Today 15000 books are rolled off by high-speed presses in just one hour and we find it hard to think of the bookless world.

In the beginning there was only a spoken word. Then, to entrust his thoughts to a more lasting form man took to drawing pictures. Their images – birds, oxen – were scratched into soft clay tablets and were mainly used for documents and public records. But “literature” depended almost totally on word-of-mouth transmition. Shortly before the 9^th century B.C., the Phoenicians began breaking sounds into their basic elements trying to find the “letters” to form words. Soon the alphabet was seized upon by Greeks.

In Egypt for 2500 years before Year One, texts had been inscribed on sheets made of papyrus. Usually several papyrus sheets were glued together to form a scroll that could accommodate a lengthy text. But what a clumsy thing to read. The scroll was wrapped around a wooden stick and the reader had to hold it in the right hand, while the left slowly unrolled it to reveal the text column. Nevertheless, the destroyed royal library at Alexandria had had no fewer than 700000 scrolls.

Shortly after Year One an unknown Roman scriber took a stack of thin sheets, folded them and fastened them together at the spine. Thus, the book was born.

Meanwhile, from the distant China in the year 105 A..D. paper enters our story. For six centuries it remained a closely guarded secret of the East. But some paper-makers were captured by Arabs, so the pliant, blossom-white enduring marvel took the world by storm.

The next major discovery had been made by German craftsman Johann Gutenberg. In 1439 he first printed a book with the help of the metal letters arranged in a mirror pattern. He was able to run off on his “press” as many books as he wished.

The first English printer William Caxton established the press of his own design at Westminster in 1476. It was an important event of the English cultural life of the 15^th century. Between 1476 and his death in 1491 Caxton printed about a hundred books. He printed translations done by himself: histories, religious books, poetry – everything in fact which had been copied by hand up to his time.

Today more than 500000 titles come off the press in a year. Man’s thoughts and dreams, his knowledge and his aspirations, are stored in books. From the first picture-script to quicker-than-the-eye offset presses, the book has come a long way, propelled by the genius of many individuals and many nations.

III. Give English equivalents for the following:

Средство образования и просвещения; породила; размножаются; от устной передачи; воспользовались; свиток; гибкое, белое, прочное чудо завоевало мир; отпечатать; мгновением; подгоняемая гением.

IV. Correct the statements:

1. Rome created the first alphabet.

2. Before the 9^th century B.C. a man wrote the texts on the sheets of papyrus.

3. The first world printer was Ivan Fiodorov.

4. We took paper from Japan.

5. Caxton printed stories by Stivenson and novels by Dickens.

6. The first book was born in Britain in 100 year B.C.

7. Nowadays nearly 1000 books are rolled off by presses in a day.

V. Answer the questions:

1. What is a book for us today?

2. How many books are rolled off every hour?

3. Why did man take to drawing pictures?

4. What did he use to scratch their images into?

5. What was “literature” then?

6. When did Phoenicians begin forming the “letters”?

7. Whom was the alphabet seized upon?

8. What is a scroll?

9. How many scrolls had there been in the royal library at Alexandria?

10. How was the first book born?

11. How did we know the secret of paper?

12. What was the main principle of the Gutenberg’s printing?

13. When did Caxton establish his press?

14. What books did he print?

VI. Retell the text using the above key-questions.