Book
2 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Book. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the general name applied to a printed volume. Printed matter occuples both sides of a certain number of leaves of paper, which are so arranged that, beginning at the upper end of the left side withof the first page, one may proceed out dislocation of thought always from left to right till he reach the lower end of the last page. The first page, or recto, of the first leaf or folio, is technically known as a bastard or half title page; the next page, or verso, of the first folio is page left blank. Then follows the title proper, usually with a blank page at the back. In many books there intervenes a and preface or introduction, a dedication, before the main body a table of contents of the book begins. If any portion of the book has got out of its place, there are two ways by which the true order can be or in discovered. At the outer corner, the center above the reading matter, of each page is a number-1, 2, 3, etc.; this or numerical order of is the pagination pages. At the bottom of certain pages and 32 numbers apart, are numbers, 8, 16 which show the first page of the printed sheet of paper after it has been folded 32 pages. A, B, etc., are into 8, 16 or often used for numerals; and if the book goes beyond the number of letters in the alphabet, the series is continued-AA, etc. BB, etc., or 2A, 2B, To understand the historic origin of this normal modern book, one must go back to a remote antiquity. The word "book" itself (Saxon boc, German, buch, Dutch, boek) appears originally in Gothic as a plural noun meaning primarily, as is generally believed, the runes inscribed on the bark of separate se branches of the beech tree (Saxon, xon, boc, German, buche, Dutch, beuke) for the purposes of divination, etc. Liber, the Latin equivalent (which has been adopted by all the Romance and Celtic tongues-French, livre, Italian, libro, Gaelic leabhar, Welsh, leor library), properly meant bark, and was applied to prepared papyrus tissue from The Greek its barklike appearance. biblia, in like manner, is associated with byblos-i. e., papyrus. As is now well known, the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians had a wide and varied literature. This was preserved in two ways; either painted on the leaves of the papyrus which grew in abundance on the banks of the Euphrates, or impressed on clay shaped into tablets or cylinders. The oldest Egyptian volume still extant (in a sense the oldest Prisse," which must be assigned to a very early period of Egyptian history, probably prior to the 12th dynasty-i. e., at least 2000 b. c. Owing to its wonderful adaptability to literary purposes, the prepared papyrus tissue (see PAPYRUS) spread to Greece (at least before the time of Herodotus) and to Rome; and though it was so far supplanted, especially in certain regions, by the finer kinds of prepared skins--the material used by the Jews, Persians, and other Oriental nations-it maintained its position as a book material down to the 10th century A. D. Ali Ibn el Azhad, in 920, describes the different kinds of pen required for writing on paper, parchment, and papyrus (see Dr. Joseph Karabacek's "Das Arabische Papier," "Vienna, 1887). The ancient papyrus book, whether Egyptian, Greek or Roman, was got up very much like a modern mounted map. A length of the material, written on one side only, was fastened to a wooden roller, round which it was wound; this formed a tama (Egyptian), kulindros (Greek), or volumen (Latin); hence our volume. Specimens of Egyptian rolls still exist, extending to upward of 20 and even 40 yards; but the great inconvenience attaching to the consulting of such enormous scrolls made it much more usual to break up any lengthy literary production into sections, each on a separate roll. In Egypt the rolls were kept in jars (holding say 9 or 10 each); in Rome in wooden boxes or canisters (often of costly workmanship), or in parchment cases. The change from the rolled to the folded form of book appears to have taken place in the ancient world after the adoption of the parchment or vellum, though practically the same arrangement of successive surfaces had been in vogue in the books or tablets of waxed wood used for notes and letters.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a collection of written or printed sheets bound together. The name is derived from beech, having a reference to the white beech tablets on which the English monks wrote their books. Our bookmaking is developed from the art of the Egyptians, who, in turn, derived their notions from the Babylonians. The Egyptian book was written on squares of papyrus, glued into long sheets. A book was preserved by rolling it up on a staff, and inclosing it possibly in a case. The title was written on a tag dangling from one end of the staff. If a work were long, it was written in two or more rolls or volumes. The use of papyrus was succeeded by that of parchment or the tanned skins of beasts. Charlemagne had been dead a hundred years before cotton paper was invented. Linen paper was introduced about the beginning of the twelfth century. Paper was made at first on hand frames about as wide as could be held in the outstretched hands. A sheet made on such a frame as this was called a folio, if folded once; if folded again into four leaves, it became a quarto; into eight leaves, an octavo; into twelve, a duodecimo, etc. Now that machinery is in use and the sheet has no fixed or even approximated size, it is customary to give the size of books in inches. Books were formerly much larger than they are now. An atlas of the fifteenth century in the British Museum is over seven feet high. When standing on end, it readily conceals a man between its pages. Other old books in European libraries are almost as large. So far as known, the first book printed from metal type is the so-called Mazarin Bible. It bears no date, but is supposed to have been issued between 1450 and 1455. There are twenty copies in various libraries. The oldest dated book was printed at Mentz in 1457. In the earlier days of printing fifty or one hundred copies were an ordinary edition. A printer took great chances in printing three hundred copies. In the latter part of the nineteenth century the American publisher of the old blue-back Webster's spelling book printed over a million copies annually to supply the demand. The earliest booksellers were the scribes who copied manuscripts and offered them for sale. One who was well established in business not infrequently kept a number of scribes at work in his shop. A list of rolls prepared by them was to be found posted up on his door. A business of this sort could be carried on only in a city like Rome, or in the vicinity of a university. The earlier printers of books offered their own publications for sale, and later appointed agents at the various institutions of learning. The university authorities of the Middle Ages found it advisable, so they thought, to license booksellers in order that books might not be sold to irresponsible persons and carried away from the university into distant regions, where they would be inaccessible. It would be difficult to form a trustworthy estimate of the number of books now published annually. In the United States alone, new books, including new editions, are published to the number of perhaps 10,000 a year. The exact number for 1901 is given at 8,141. As to classification,--fiction, law, theology, education, and juvenile books rank in the order named. The American people pay out $50,000,000 a year for books. This is considered unprecedented, but, after all, it is less than one dollar per inhabitant. 2026 Editor's Note: The book's decisive change was one this entry passes over: the roll it describes lost out to the codex , the stacked and bound pages we still use, which could be opened at any point and written on both sides. Printing then multiplied it, and although electronic books and audiobooks were widely expected to finish the printed volume off, print has stubbornly held its ground. (Ed: BR 2026-07-18)