Tablets, scrolls and more

Books and documents have been used to record and share information for thousands of years. The earliest "books" were produced in Middle East as clay tablets. Writing in the form of symbols was pressed into the clay when wet using a reed and then the clay allowed to dry. The ancient Egyptians used the papyrus plants growing along the banks of the Nile to form large sheets on which they inscribed symbols and pictograms with an early form of ink. Prepared animal skins have also long been used to carry text and pictures and became the most commonly used writing material by the Middle Ages.

By the second century AD, the codex was becoming more common as a device that allowed large amounts of information to be stored easily. Similar size sheets of material (papyrus, paper or skin) were folded and then stitched together. The block of stitched sheets was then often protected by a more sturdy outer layer which we have come to call the binding. It did not take long before the codex supplanted scrolls as the dominant book format.