From cuneiform to computer keystrokes. Thus when digital technologies of reading and writing arose, soon thereafter people became intensely reflective about what had preceded them: books, paper, pens ...

For instance, there's some doubt over whether Thomas Edison really came up with the idea of the motion picture camera — or whether he pinched it. There's also a question mark over whether "ignored" ...

London is a huge draw for Americans, but the British Library, the United Kingdom’s equivalent to the Library of Congress, is not always on people's radar. But the library's collection is comprehensive ...

In late December I recommended one of my favorite recent books off my reading list – recent in this case meaning when I read them, not necessarily when they were published. That was Empires of the ...

In 2010, archaeologist Glenn Schwartz quietly suggested that the history of writing needs, well, rewriting. More than a decade later, he still thinks he's on to something. If he's right, the world's ...

It’s hard to believe, but one of the most important changes in the way people write in the last 50 years has been largely overlooked by historians of literature. The word processor—that is, any ...

About 5,000 years ago, 30 goats changed hands between Sumerians. To record the transaction, a receipt was carved onto a clay tag, about the size of a Post-it. Simple geometric signs represented the ...

Ancient written languages emerged as a revolutionary development in human history, allowing civilizations to record important ...

“The increase in the velocity of history means, among other things, that the ‘present’ becomes the ‘past’ more swiftly than ever before.” There is nothing new about man’s recording the events of his ...

A growing number of historians of Hindi literature believe that the Hindi literary tradition begins with the invention of the Sufi romance and its first known example, the Candāyan (1379 CE) of ...