History of Knowledge Science

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2007 NUMERICAL REPRESENTATION Research begins into the use of integers for language-independent structured knowledge exchange.

2004 OWL-S The Semantic Web should enable greater access not only to content but also to services on the Web. Users and software agents should be able to discover, invoke, compose, and monitor Web resources offering particular services and having particular properties, and should be able to do so with a high degree of automation if desired. Powerful tools should be enabled by service descriptions, across the Web service lifecycle.

2003 OWL The OWL Web Ontology Language is designed for use by applications that need to process the content of information instead of just presenting information to humans. OWL facilitates greater machine interpretability of Web content than that supported by XML, RDF, and RDF Schema (RDF-S) by providing additional vocabulary along with a formal semantics.

2001 WSDL WSDL is an XML format for describing network services as a set of endpoints operating on messages containing either document-oriented or procedure-oriented information. The operations and messages are described abstractly, and then bound to a concrete network protocol and message format to define an endpoint.

2001 AMALGAM Amalgam is a novel system developed in the Natural Language Processing group at Microsoft Research for sentence realization during natural language generation. Sentence realization is the process of generating (realizing) a fluent sentence from a semantic representation.

2001 WIKIPEDIA Wikipedia, a project to produce a free content encyclopedia that could be edited by anyone, formally began on 15 January 2001 as a complement to the similar, but expert-written, Nupedia project. Several similar projects eventually merge into the Wikipedia effort. The rate of growth of the number of articles has more or less steadily increased since the inception of the project.

2001 DAML+OIL DARPA, the current title of the 1957 ARPA organization, creates the DARPA Agent Markup Language based upon RDF, XML and SGML. The Ontology Interface Layer, or Ontology Interchange Language (OIL) component is a description logic absorbed into the language.

1999 P2P In 1999, Napster becomes the major way to share files. Napster changed the way of sharing files than before because this service lets peers download music files and also the capacity of it is much greater than other file sharing programs before. Research begins into other uses for P2P technology, made popular by file sharing.

1999 SCORM Signed on January 12, 1999, Executive Order 13111 tasked the Department of Defense to take the lead in working with other federal agencies and the private sector to develop common specifications and standards for technology-based learning. In early 1999 the first draft version of the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) was developed as a way to integrate and connect the work of these organizations in support of the DoD's Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative.

1999 RDF An XML-based extension of the earlier 1996 technology PICS for content description. It drew upon submissions by Microsoft, Netscape and the Dublin Core/Warwick Framework. RDF is used primarily to organize and express document properties. The specific needs of different resource types, for example authorization structures or versioning necessitated a schema language, similar to XML DTD, called the RDF Schema (RDF-S) language.

1998 XML In 1998, an Extensible Markup Language (XML) was introduced, authored predominantly by Tim Bray and C.M. Sperberg-McQueen. Its goal was to combine the approachable simplicity of HTML with the extensibility of SGML while avoiding the shortcomings of each. Its popularity sparks widespread interest in knowledge representation, formerly a subdiscipline of artificial intelligence and philosophy.

1996 PICS Platform Independent Content Selection (PICS) for content description. A technology for classifying and labeling resources on the Internet.

1995 HTML Hypertext Markup Language, inspired by SGML and incorporating hyperlinks, is first standardized in 1995. This language allows the transmission and viewing of web pages and leads to an explosion in the popularity of the Internet.

1995 DUBLIN CORE National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the Online Computer Library Center held a joint workshop to discuss metadata semantics in Dublin, Ohio. At this event, called simply the "OCLC/NCSA Metadata Workshop", more than 50 people discussed how a core set of semantics for Web-based resources would be extremely useful for categorizing the Web for easier search and retrieval. They dubbed the result "Dublin Core metadata" based on the location of the workshop.

1994 W3C In October 1994, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Laboratory for Computer Science (MIT/LCS) in collaboration with CERN, where the Web originated, with support from DARPA (formerly ARPA) and the European Commission. This organization would serve as a focus point for standardizing mechanisms of information exchange over the Internet.

1994 CSS Håkon Wium Lie publishes a proposal for cascading style sheets to separate formatting and display suggestions from HTML markup. HTML was not yet standardized, and the work soon was applied to more general markup languages. In competition at this time was DSSSL, a complex style and transformation language under development at ISO for printing SGML documents.

1991 WWW The world wide web, a line-mode user interface from CERN. Released to the world in August of 1991 in the Usenet forum alt.hypertext. This development will lead to the decentralized publishing and exchange of information. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and its accompanying transmission protocol (HTTP) exist in their infancies.

1989 HYPERLINKS SGML permitted the Swiss High-Energy Particle Physics lab, Conseil Européenne pour la Recherche Nucleaire (CERN), to develop an instance of it for their needs. This set into motion the work of Tim Berners-Lee, of CERN at the time, who conceived and developed anchor tags, or hyperlinks, to connect text documents together.

1984 CYCL Doug Lenat starts the Cyc Project. The Cyc project's objective was to codify, in machine-usable form, the millions of pieces of knowledge that comprise human common sense. CycL is the representation scheme by which this system stores knowledge. The modern version is a second-order logical language.

1984 DOMAIN NAME SYSTEM Domain Name System (DNS) introduced, based on work at the University of Wisconsin. Users no longer required to know the exact path to other systems.

1979 USENET Usenet established using UUCP between Duke and UNC by Tom Truscott, Jim Ellis, and Steve Bellovin. Usenet is to become a world-wide distributed discussion system consisting of a set of "newsgroups" with names that are classified hierarchically by subject.

1978 SGML The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) committee on Information Processing established the Computer Languages for the Processing of Text committee. This leads to the creation of Standardized GML (SGML).

1976 INK JET Ink-jet printing announced by IBM

1974 NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING Natural language processing started in the 70's (1974?) at U.C. Santa Cruz.

1969 ARPANET ARPANET commissioned by DoD for research into networking. First four nodes: UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, University of California Santa Barbara, University of Utah. These interconnected machines would grow into today's Internet.

1969 GML Charles Goldfarb, Edward Mosher and Raymond Lorie created Generalized Markup Language (GML) for IBM to provide searchable and traversable interaction with legal information systems.

1969 MAGNASCAN Colour scanner Crosfield Electronics 'Magnascan'

1967 ISBN The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a unique machine-readable identification number, which marks any book unmistakably. ISBN was started in Britain by David Whitaker and Emery Koltay.

1966 ALPAC REPORT Although widely condemned as biased and short-sighted, the ALPAC report brought a virtual end to MT research in the United States for over a decade and it had great impact elsewhere in the Soviet Union and in Europe. However, research did continue in Canada, in France and in Germany.

1964 DISTRIBUTED NETWORKS Paul Baran of RAND: "On Distributed Communications Networks" discusses packet-switching networks with no single outage point as a solution to how the U.S. Air Force could maintain its command and control over its missiles and bombers, after a nuclear attack. This was to be a military research network that could survive a nuclear strike, decentralized so that if any locations (cities) in the U.S. were attacked, the military could still have control of nuclear arms for a counter-attack.

1963 CIVIL RIGHTS The civil rights movement reaches a dramatic climax with a massive march on Washington, D.C. Among the themes of the march "for jobs and freedom" was a demand for passage of the Civil Rights Act. In Washington, an audience of more than 200,000 hears Martin Luther King deliver his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

1961 PACKET SWITCHING "Information Flow in Large Communication Nets" First paper on packet-switching theory authored by Leonard Kleinrock.

1957 ARPA USSR launches Sputnik, first artificial earth satellite. In response, US forms the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the following year, within the Department of Defense (DoD) to establish US lead in science and technology applicable to the military.

1955 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Dartmouth College’s John McCarthy coins the term "artificial intelligence." An attempt was to be made to find how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems then reserved for humans, and improve themselves.

1955 PAPER Dry Coated paper developed at the Battlefield Memorial Institute, Columbia

1953 DNA F. Crick and J. Watson discover the Double Helix

1952 PREDICTION A UNIVAC I computer made by Remington-Rand accurately predicted the outcome of the US presidential election, this brought the computer to the attention of the general public.

1952 COPYRIGHT Copyright. World Copyright Union founded in Geneva

1947 MACHINE TRANSLATION The beginning may be dated to a letter in March 1947 from Warren Weaver of the Rockefeller Foundation to cyberneticist Norbert Wiener.

1947 RAM The first generation of modern programmed electronic computers was built in 1947. This group included computers using Random Access Memory (RAM), a form of memory designed to give almost instantaneous access to any information stored in memory.

1944 XEROGRAPHY Xerography (Xerox copies) invented.

1943 FIRST DIGITAL COMPUTER A team of mathematicians and scientists was assigned by British Secret Service in 1939 to develop a machine to crack the German's code ENIGMA. The result was COLOSSUS, the first electric digital computer in 1943.

1943 CONDITIONAL CONTROL TRANSFER John Von Neumann realizes that significant benefits and flexibility can be achieved by writing the program instructions to allow dynamic modification while the program is running. Von Neumann meets this need by providing a special type of machine instruction called conditional control transfer that permits the sequence of operations to be interrupted and reinitiated at any point. He prescribes storing all instruction programs together with data in the same memory unit so that instructions can be arithmetically modified in the same way as data. As a result of these and several other techniques, computing and programming becomes faster, more flexible, and more efficient.

1940 BIBLIOCIDE When Soviet occupied independent Lithuania in 1940, a "bibliocide" started, lasting in effect until 1989, only interrupted in 1941-1944 by the German occupation, infamous for their book pyres and deadly censorship in Germany and occupied countries.

1937 INFORMATION PROCESSING Shannon realized in his paper that an electric circuit used the same concept as Boolean Algebra. If an electric circuit is designed according to Boolean rules, it could be used to represent logic. Expressions could be validated and calculations be made. It became clear that information could be manipulated by a machine. Shannon’s publication had a tremendous effect and marked a turning point in the development of modern computer science.

1936 TURING MACHINES Alan M. Turing published his article: 'On Computable Numbers'. Here Turing explained his ideas on the 'Universal Turing Machine', an electronic calculator, a machine that could make any calculation or logical operation. His model is theoretical and geared towards solving mathematical problems. A working model will not be made, but his ideas will determine the internal architecture of computers in the future and lay the foundation for the modern theory of computation.

1935 MACHINE TRANSLATION In the mid 1930s, a French-Armenian Georges Artsrouni and a Russian Petr Troyanskii applied for patents for ‘translating machines’.

1935 BOOKBURNING Nazis. Bookburning

1932 MAGNETIC DRUM G. Taushek invents on the basis of a principle discovered by Pleumer: the magnetic drum. He put a ferromagnetic layer on the outside of a metal drum. Read and write heads were mounted in a distance of some micrometers that produced an electromagnetic pulse. This pulse could be stored by changing the magnetic orientation of the ferromagnetic particle the write head passed over at that very moment. Thus binary values of 0 and 1 are recorded by generating electric pulses while the drum is turning.

1929 FAX MACHINE First form of modern fax machine patented by Rudolf Hell, a German engineer who pioneered in sending messages over long distances. The machine was called the "Hell Schreiber".

1928 TELEVISION NETWORK General Electric (GE) began regular TV broadcasting with a 24-line system from a station that would become WGY in Schenectady NY; by the end of the year, over 15 stations were licensed for TV broadcasting; Dr. Ernest Alexanderson developed a mechanical TV set with three-inch screen that was manufactured and sold by GE for home use.

1928 MAGNETIC TAPE Fritz Pleumer patented his magnetic tape. Data could be recorded and read back. The invention was based on that of Valdemar Poulsen's of 1898.

1926 TELEVISION BROADCAST The very first television picture was transmitted by him in 1926 from one room to another by John Logie Baird.

1925 CATHODE RAY TUBE The first television receiver demonstrated in Germany. This will be the main technology to view data directly from the computer. It will be called (Cathode Ray Tube) CRT or Computer Screen.

1925 RADIOVISION Jenkins made his first public demonstration of "radiovision" with 48 lines per inch and synchronized sound over a 5 mile distance from Anacostia to Washington DC to members of the Navy and Commerce Department.

1924 CUMULATIVE LIST BRITISH BOOKS Whitaker's Cumulative Book List of British books

1922 GLAVLIT In 1922, the Soviet central censorship office was established, known for short as Glavlit. The destruction of libraries was systematically applied by the rulers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, infamous for the longest lasting and most extensive censorship in the 20th century, ending in the late 1980s.

1914 GRAPHIC ARTS Founding of American Institute of Graphic Arts

1913 VACUUM TUBE Harold D. Arnold at AT&T developed the amplifying vacuum tube in 1913 that made possible the first coast-to-coast telephony.

1906 IABA International Antiquarian Booksellers Assoc. founded

1906 TRANSATLANTIC VOICE TRANSMISSION Reginald Fessenden of Canada invented a continuous-wave voice transmitter using a high-frequency alternator developed by Charles Steinmetz. He made voice broadcast over the North Atlantic in 1906

1901 BROADCAST Marconi organized the first Trans Atlantic radio broadcast from Newfoundland.

1898 MAGNETIC STORAGE Valdemar Poulsen invents a magnetic wire on which data can be recorded.

1894 YELLOW BOOK Yellow Book, The, until 1897.

1891 ROSENWALD Lessing J. Rosenwald, d. 1979. Former chairman of Sears, Roebuck Co. gave to the nation 2,600 exquisite volumes, the greatest benefaction in the Library of Congress' history.

1890 HARRIS PRESS Harris Press, American automatic platen press

1886 LINOTYPE Linotype invented by Otto Mergenthaler

1883 PHOTOGRAVURE Photogravure, First in Britain by T. and R. Annan of Glasgow

1883 PAPER Hunter, Dard, d.1966. Leading authority on papermaking

1879 SYMBOLIC LOGIC Gottlob Frege was one of the founders of modern symbolic languages. He proposed a system of notation that we now know as 'proposition logic'. His method will be used extensively in knowledge systems in the field of Artificial Intelligence from the late 1900s onwards.

1878 PRINTING Wicks, Frederick of Glasgow invented typecasting machine

1876 TELEPHONE Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone. The age of telecommunication started via telephone wires.

1876 DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM Devised in 1876 as a system of categorization for small libraries, it has the advantage of a limited number of general categories and short call-numbers. The system is based on ten classes of subject (000-999), which are then further subdivided. Dewey also promoted the use of the metric system, helped found the American Library Association also in 1876. When Dewey created Columbia University's School of Library Economy in 1887, he began the field of library science in the United States.

1874 BAUD The French engineer E. Baudot (1845-1903) invent the Baudot-Telegraph. He calls the transmission speed Baud.

1868 14TH AMMENDMENT The 14th Amendment of the Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing equal protection under the law.

1863 ROTARY LETTERPRESS Rotary web-fed letterpress machine invented by William Bullock.

1861 PANTELEGRAPH Giovanni Casselli brought the first fax machine on the market: the Pantelegraph. It utilizes electochemistry and pendulums to synchronize reading and writing apparatuses.

1860 BINDING Buckram, first used for bookcovers.

1860 PHOTOGRAPHY, COLOR Colour photography by J.C.Maxwell

1859 DARWIN Darwin publishes The Origin of Species

1857 PHOTOGRAPHY John Pouncy's Dorsetshire Photographically Illustrated was the first book illustrated by photolithography, two volumes containing 79 plates in total.

1856 PHOTOGRAPHY First general treatise on the various applications of photography to the printing press published by Georg Kessler in Berlin.

1854 PHOTOGRAPHY Société Française de Photographie founded by Eugène Durieu.

1854 LINOTYPE Mergenthaler, Ottmar, d.1899 from Hachtel, Germany, invented linotype in 1884

1853 NATURE PRINTING Auer, Alois, invents nature printing technique (direct duplication of natural objects)

1853 PHOTOGRAPHY Photographic Society of London founded by Sir Charles Eastlake.

1850 HUNTINGTON Henry E. Huntington (1850-1927), millionaire entrepreneur built a library on the grounds of an old orange grove in Sam Marino in Southwest California. Library is amongst the finest in the world.

1847 BOOLEAN LOGIC George Boole, a British mathematician, proved in his Mathematical Analyses of Logic and Investigation of the Law of Thought the relation between mathematics and logic; his algebra of logic (binary logic) made it possible to treat a number of logical problems as algebraic operations. This was a breakthrough for mathematics and Boole was the first to prove that logic is part of mathematics and not of philosophy as was commonly accepted by scientists of this era.

1844 MONOTYPE Lanston, Tolbert, d.1913, inventor of monotype typesetting

1843 PAPER Paper, first time use wood for making paper

1841 PAPERBACK First paperbacks by Tauchnitz Verlag Germany

1841 HALF-TONE Meisenbach, Georg, d.1912. Inventor of half-tone reproduction

1841 PHOTOGRAPHY First achromatic portrait lens specially designed for photography by Joseph Petzval, Vienna, introduced by Friedrich Voigtlaender.

1840 PHOTOGRAPHY 18 April 1840 Dr. Joseph Berres, professorof anatomy in Vienna, stated in the Wiener Zeitung that he had succeede in converting daguerreotypes in to printing plates.

1840 ILLSTRATED LONDON NEWS Illustrated London News founded

1839 PHOTOGRAPHY Head of the Charité Clinic in Paris, Dr. Alfred Donné, was the first to announce success with etching daguerreotype plates.

1838 KNIGHT Knight, Charles, patented a method of color printing in which four relief blocks of wood or metal rotated and impressed in turn on to a sheet of paper

1838 COLOR PRINTING Knight, Charles, patented a method of color printing in which four relief blocks of wood or metal rotated and impressed in turn on to a sheet of paper

1837 TELEGRAPH The British physicist and inventor Sir Charles Wheatstone and the British electrical engineer Sir William Fothergill Cooke invent the first British electric telegraph. Samuel Finley Breese Morse patents a more practical version. Information can now be rapidly transmitted at great distances.

1836 CHROMO LITHOGRAPHY Chromolithography by Gottfried Engelmann

1835 ELECTRICAL RELAY Joseph Henry invents the electrical relay, a means to send electrical pulses over great distances. The foundation for the telegraph is laid.

1833 DAGUERREOTYPE Daguerreotype invented

1832 WATT, PHILIP Bookbinding, invention of sewing machine by Philip Watt of London

1832 LITHOGRAPHY, RAUCOURT Raucourt's 'A Manual of Lithography' published

1832 BINDING Bookbinding, invention of sewing machine by Philip Watt of London

1831 BIOLOGY Robert Brown discovers that every cell has a nucleus

1830 CYLINDER Drum Cylinder Press by R.Hoe

1829 BRAILLE Braille, Invention of embossed printing for the blind by Louis Braille.

1825 BÖRSENVEREIN Börsenverein der Deutsche Buchhandlung, Organization for German Booktrade, founded (those engaged in reprinting were excluded)

1822 ANALYTICAL ENGINE Babbage proposed building a machine called the an Analytical Engine. The Analytical Engine was intended to use loops to control an automatic calculator, which could make decisions based on the results of previous computations. This machine was also intended to employ several features subsequently used in modern computers, including sequential control, branching, and looping.

1822 HELIOGRAPHY Invented by Niépce. He made his first photograph in 1826.

1822 PHOTOGRAPHY Heliography invented by Niépce in 1822. He made his first photograph in 1826.

1819 TYPEWRITER Sholes, Christopher, d.1890, inventor of typewriter, first perfected typewriter was marketed by Remington 1874

1812 CYLINDER PRESS Cylinder Press, First built in Britain by Friedrich Konig

1808 LAURENZIANA Laurenziana. The Laurenziana and Marciana libraries of the Medici's combined in Florence now forming the Biblioteca Mediceco-Laurenziana

1804 COLOR PRINTING Baxter, George (d. 1867). Patented letterpress process for color printing

1802 BIOLOGY Lamark created the word biology making it independent science

1800 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Congress. Library of Congress founded

1799 ROSETTA STONE The 'Rosetta' stone is cut. It contains the same text in Egyptian hieroglyphic, Egyptian demotic, and Greek writing. It was discovered in 1799 near the mouth of the Nile and served to break the code for deciphering ancient Egyptian works.

1798 LITHOGRAPHY Stone is ground smooth. The drawing is made on it with a greasy lithographic pencil or crayon, and then fixed by rinsing the stone with a very weak solution of nitric acid and gum arabic. The ink, which is greasy, is repelled by the water-wet areas and adheres only to the areas marked by the crayon.

1794 SPILSBURY Spilsbury's 'The Art of Etching and Aqua Tinting' published

1787 FREEDOM OF SPEECH The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, guaranteeing freedom of speech as well as of the press, is regarded as the root of the comprehensive protection of freedom of expression and thought in western countries.

1785 TIMES, THE Times. Foundation of Daily Universal Register, from 1788 to be called The Times.

1782 CYLINDER PRINTING Dickinson, John, d.1869, inventor of the cylinder printing machine

1777 LOGICAL COMPUTING Charles Stanhope devised and published a simple machine that mechanized logical relations. This was the beginning of a new attitude in which computers were considered as mechanical embodiments of generalized mathematical processes, rather than simple arithmetic machines.

1776 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation..."

1774 CYLINDER PRESS König, Friedrich, d.1833. Inventor of the cylinder press.

1770 PAPER Whatman paper, English hand-made wove paper first made by James Whatman at Maidstone

1766 FREEDOM OF THE PRESS Sweden was the first country to abolish censorship and introduce a law guaranteeing freedom of the press in 1766.

1753 BRITISH LIBRARY British Library. The national library of Britain came into being in 1753 when parliament decided to purchase the collection of books and manuscripts that had been left by Hans Sloane. A few years later George II presented the Royal library

1746 JOHNSON'S DICTIONARY Johnson's Dictionary, made in England, between 1746 and 1773

1738 CHROMO LITHOGRAPHY Engelmann, Gottfried, d.1839, lithograph printer, inventor of chromolithography in 1836

1734 AQUATINT This process was invented by Jean-Baptiste Le Prince (1734-1784). François Janinet (1752-1813) was the first to employ it for colour prints, by using several plates. Francisco Goya made great use of it, often combining it with line engraving, etching and also drypoint. In more recent times it has been one of the favourite techniques of Georges Rouault (1871-1958) and Pablo Picasso.

1726 AUSTRIA NATIONAL LIBRARY Austria. Imperial Library (now National Library) building built by J.B.Fischer

1712 STAMP ACT An excise duty on advertisements was introduced by the Stamp Act (1712), along with other so-called taxes on knowledge aimed at curbing the nascent power of the press. The rate of duty, at one penny on a whole sheet (four sides of print), was the same as the cover price of The Spectator, and this effective doubling of the price killed it, along with many other newspapers. But the newspaper had already become a permanent part of the social and literary life in London, and not even higher duties could prevent the proliferation of newspaper titles throughout the century.

1709 COPYRIGHT Copyright Act in England

1706 FRANKLIN Franklin, Benjamin, d.1790, printer, publisher, statesman

1691 MAZARIN Mazarin. Second Mazarin bibliotheque opened

1695 LICENSING ACT Licensing act ended in England.

1690 PAPER Paper, first papermaking in America

1689 CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN At her death in 1689 her library, known as the Bibliotheca Alessandrina (she considered herself a female Alexander the Great), was transferred to the Vatican Library.

1673 PAPER Hollander, paper pulp beating machine, probably by Jacob Honingh in Zaandijk, Holland

1661 NEWSPAPER First in Poland.

1661 BIBLE First bible published in America by Samuel Green (John Eliot's Algonquin Indian version)

1650 ATLAS MAGNUS Atlas Magnus Blaeu made between 1650-1662.

1645 NEWSPAPER First in Sweden.

1644 AREOPAGITICA The powerful bureaucratic system of pre-censorship practised in late Medieval Europe, was the target for John Milton in his much disputed speech "Areopagitica" to the Parliament of England in 1644. His strong advocacy in defence of free expression contributed to the final lapse of the Licensing Act years later. Milton’s "Areopagitica" also became one of the most quoted sources of argument for freedom of expression, and remains today a true beacon of enlightenment.

1643 LICENSING ACT Licensing Act passed by British Parliament in 1643.

1643 MAZARIN Mazarin, First Mazarin bibliotheque opened for scientists and literary scholars

1642 CALCULATOR Blaise Pascal makes his "Pascaline" a mechanical calculator.

1642 MEZZOTINT Mezzotint invented by Ludwig von Siegen.

1636 NEWSPAPER First in Italy.

1634 NEWSPAPER First in Denmark.

1631 OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER In Paris in 1631, the Nouvelles Ordinaires de Divers Endroits, a publishing venture by the booksellers Louis Vendosme and Jean Martin, was immediately replaced by an officially authorized publication, La Gazette, published under the name of Théophraste Renaudot but with influential backing by Cardinal de Richelieu. The new publication was to continue (as La Gazette de France) until 1917, casting the shadow of authority over nonofficial newspapers throughout its life.

1631 NEWSPAPER First in France.

1628 HARVEY William Harvey publishes the book where he proves the blood circulation

1626 FACSIMILE Facsimile. first facsimile edition by Plantin, 16th century Martyrologium Hieronymianum (engraved on copper plates)

1621 NEWSPAPER First newspaper in England.

1618 INTERNATIONAL NEWS The Dutch, with their advantageous geographical and trading position, who pioneered the international coverage of news through their "corantos," or "current news." The Courante uyt Italien, Duytsland, & C., began to appear weekly or twice-weekly in 1618.

1616 COPERNICUS Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium is placed on the index of prohibited books maintained by the Church of Rome.

1610 NEWSPAPER First in Switzerland.

1609 TELESCOPE Galileo Galilei creates the telescope

1609 NEWSPAPER The Relation of Strasbourg, regarded as the first regularly printed newsletter, appeared in 1609 by Johann Carolus.

1604 FIRST ENGLISH DICTIONARY The first published Dictionary of English, Robert Cowdrey's Table Alphabetical, of 3000 unusual words.

1602 OXFORD LIBRARY Oxford library reestablished by Queen Elizabeth's statesman Thomas Bodley

1594 LEIPZIG Leipzig bookfair

1593 PHILIPPINES Philippines, The first book printed in Manilla: Doctrina Christiana

1577 KEPLER Kepler observes a supernova that was the proof that the space above the Moon, that was considered perfect (that is motionless) from the Aristotelian cosmology, was actually in motion

1570 THEATRUM ORBIS TERRARUM Ortelius. Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, famous atlas by Abraham Ortelius

1563 STATE PERMISSION Charles IX of France decreed that nothing could be printed without the special permission of the king. Soon other secular rulers of Europe followed suit, and scientific and artistic expressions, potentially threatening to the moral and political order of society, were brought under control through systems of governmental license to print and publish.

1559 INDEX OF PROHIBITED BOOKS An Index of Prohibited Books was drawn up by order of Pope Paul IV. The lists were issued 20 times through the centuries by different popes, the last issued as recently as in 1948 and the list was dissolved in 1966.

1558 POITIERS, DIANA DE Mistress of Henry II, lobbied successfully for a passage of an ordinance that required French publishers to present copies of every book they issued to the libraries of Blois and Fontainebleau.

1550 OXFORD LIBRARY Oxford library plundered by soldiers of Edward VI

1545 OXFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Bodley, Sir Thomas, d.1613. Rebuilder of Oxford University Library bearing his name.

1543 VESALIS Vesalis publishes De Humani Corpus Fabrica the first human anatomy based on operations made on human bodies. Until then the anatomy of Galinus was based only on operations done only on apes.

1543 COPERNICUS Copernicus publishes De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium founding the beginning of the Scientific Revolution

1543 SUPPRESSION The Catholic Church controlled all publications through its decree in 1543 that no book could be printed or sold without permission of the church.

1540 EGERTON Egerton, Sir Thomas, d.1617, founder of one of the oldest private libraries in Britain; in 1917 a large portion of the archives was bought by Henry E. Huntington

1540 PAPER Paper, first paper mill in Stockholm

1537 BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONAL France I ordered that all French presses should deliver a copy of every book they printed to the royal library

1534 BIBLE Luther. First complete Luther bible translation, illustrated, was printed by Hans Lufft at Wittenberg

1534 FRANKFURT Frankfurt Bookfair

1531 EMBLEMATUM LIBER Emblem Books, the first anthology of emblems was printed in Augsburg by Heinrich Steiner: Emblematum Liber

1530 TORY Tory, Geoffroy, becomes the first royal printer in Paris

1525 LAURENZIANA Laurenziana. Michelangelo erects building for the Bibliotheca Laurenziana (De Medici collection)

1522 BIBLE Luther, Melchior Lotter printed the first edition of Luther's translation of the New Testament

1521 CAMBRIDGE Cambridge University Press founded.

1517 LUTHER Luther's fight against the Roman Catholic church starts. This is considered to be the first revolution of ideas supported by the fast and wide spread of written information thanks to the invention of printing.

1516 BIBLE Bible. Johan Froben of Basle published New Testament in Greek

1509 NARRENSCHIFF Narrenschiff, English adaptation Ship of Fools by Alexander Barclay, based on the Latin translation by Jacob Locher.

1508 WOODCUT, COLOURED Jost de Negker, active in Antwerp 1508-1544, master of Burgkmair, Cranach and Hans Baldung Grien. Believed to be the inventor of the colored woodcut.

1508 BURGKMAIR Earliest dated German colour woodcut: The Emperor Maximilian on Horseback by Hans Burgkmair (1473-1531)

1499 PRINTING PRESS Printing Press, oldest known reproduction of, in Dance of Death printed in Lyon by M.Huss

1498 PETRUCCI Music Printing using movable type invented by Ottaviano Petrucci of Venice

1497 NEUDÖRFER Neudörfer, Johann, d. 1563, writing master of Nuremberg, his 'Fundament' was the first writing book to be published (collection of Fraktur scripts).

1495 BIBLIOGRAPHY Bale, John (1563). Compiler of first bibliography in England

1494 SHIP OF FOOLS Das Narrenschiff by Sebastian Brant, first publication. Within fifteen years the work appeared in one Latin, three French, one Dutch, one Low German and an English version. One reason often cited to explain Brant's far-reaching appeal was that he wrote in short chapters, mixed his *fools* skillfully, and maintained a fluid style that engaged his readers.

1493 ETCHING The earliest known etchings are by Daniel Hopfer, active at Augsburg between 1493 and 1536, the Swiss Urs Graf, and Dürer, who did five etchings on iron, among them The Agony in the Garden, and The Cannon. Lucas van Leyden (1489-1533) also used this technique on a few rare occasions. The earliest Italian etching is by Parmigianino (1503-1540), whose prints are more sketchy and spontaneous than those of the Northern artists. Etching is above all the medium of Rembrandt: with it he reached a depth and universality of expression never equaled in the history of prints.

1490 NEWSBOOKS By the final decade of the 15th century, publication of newsbooks was running at more than 20 a year in England alone, matching a regular supply on the Continent. Authors and printers escaped official censorship or penalties by remaining anonymous or cultivating a certain obscurity, for it took a long time before the pamphlets came to the attention of the authorities.

1479 CARPI Carpi, Ugo da, d.1533, leading engraver of Venice and Rome, likely one of the developers, inventors of chiarusco printing

1472 DANTE Divine Comedy, first printed edition of Dante's epic poem

1471 BIBLE Malermi Bible (Italian translation of the Vulgate) first printed in Venice by Wendelin da Spira

1469 BINDING Bookbinding, the first time the roller or roulette appeared in German binderies

1469 PAPER Arches Papermill in Vosges, France

1466 PAPER Petrucci, Ottaviano, d.1539. Printer in Venice who established a papermill that remained active until the 19th century

1465 DRYPOINT ENGRAVING The first drypoint engravings known in the history of prints are those of the Master of the Housebook, active in Germany between 1465 and 1500. The technique was also used, though rarely, by Dürer, for example in his St. Jerome by a Pollard Willow (1512). The unsurpassed master was to be Rembrandt, who used drypoint on its own, or with etching.

1464 POSTAL SERVICE As vital to dissemination of information as the art of printing was, was also the development of regular postal service. First established in France in 1464, the postal service soon became the most widely used transportation system of person-to-person and country-to-country communication.

1461 BIBLE, BIBLIA PAUPERUM Biblia Pauperum issued in Bamberg with hand-colored illustrations

1461 EDELSTEIN Edelstein, der, by Ulrich Boner, printed by Albrecht Pfister of Bamberg, first printed book with woodcut illustrations

1460 FROBEN Froben, Johann, d.1527, started printing in Basle 1491. Printer of Erasmus publications

1458 CORVINUS Corvinus, Matthias, d.1490, King of Hungary, famous book collector

1457 COLOR PRINTING Colour printing, earliest example in Mainz Psalter

1456 BIBLE, GUTENBERG Gutenberg. 42-line bible by Gutenberg

1455 GUTENBERG (Mainz, Germany) creates the typing machine that created the possibility of printing the Bible

1455 XOLOGRAPHY Biblia Pauperum, first xylographic version made in Germany

1455 BLOCK BOOK Block Books in Europe, between 1455 and 1510.

1453 CONSTANTINE Constantine library. Many books were burnt in this year (Constantinople captured by the Turks) or carried away and sold

1430 XYLOGRAPHIC BOOKS Xylographic. First xylographic books, or block books produced in Germany and Holland

1418 WOODCUT Woodcut, oldest known specimen

1373 BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE Bibliothèque Nationale. Charles V is said to be the founder of this library. The 1373 catalogue of his library lists about 1000 volumes, housed in the Louvre

1338 PAPER Oldest known paper mill in France

1325 BIBLE Biblia Pauperum made in Klosterneuburg near Vienna

1276 PAPER Paper. First papermill established in Fabriano, Italy

1276 WATERMARK The important invention of watermarking was made at one of the Fabriano Mills in Tuscany during the second half of the 13th century. One can assume that the reason for the watermark was to give the product a branded trade mark of superior quality. There exists a remarkable archive of Fabriano watermarks going back to the first one in 1276, showing a mark for each year until modern times.

1250 BLOCK PRINTING the first record of block printing (on paper?) in Egypt.

1250 FORE EDGE Fore Edge Painting, first on French psalter manuscript

1238 PAPER Papermaking mill established in Capellades, Catalonia

1140 WINCHESTER Winchester Bible, 1140-1190, English late Romanesque illumination

1085 PAPER Papermaking in Jativa Spain

1068 FATIMITE Fatimite. Library of the Fatimite family (Cairo) destoyed by the Turks

1041 MOVABLE TYPE In 1403 the earliest known book was printed from movable type in Korea, a process that had been used by the Chinese as early as 1041.

954 ABINGDON Abingdon Monastery founded by Aethelwold, monks famous for manuscript illumination, Winchester School

896 COLOPHON Colophon, oldest known manuscript colophon, in Books of the Prophets written by Moses ben Asher in Tiberias.

868 PAPER The first book printed on paper in China, in block printed Buddhist scripts.

868 WOODBLOCK China, oldest known woodblock printing (method was in use much earlier)

800 PAPER Marbling in Japan, first Turkish marbled paper 1586, first Dutch 1598

751 PAPER Papermaking introduced in the Islamic world

750 PAPER Paper making reached Samarkand before 750, Baghdad in 793, Damascus and Cairo in approximately 950. Through the Arab conquest of North Africa and Southern Spain, the invention first reached the Moorish parts of Spain in the 11th century. A mill was recorded at Fez in Morocco in 1100, and the first on the Spanish mainland at Xativa in 1151. It reached Southern Italy in the 13th century, where, until quite recently, some of the oldest handmade paper mills in Italy were operating near Amalfi, in the Naples area.

750 CANTERBURY Canterbury School of manuscript illumination, active until 13th century.

716 AMITIANUS Amiatinus. Codex Amiatinus, made at the scriptorium of the twin monasteries Wearmouth and Jarrow near Newcastle, Northumbria. This codex brings together the entire old and new testament in 1,030 folios in a single binding.

687 CUTHBERT, GOSPEL OF St. JOHN Undoubtedly one of history's most dramatic book exhumations involves a manuscript copy of the Gospel of St.John that was buried in the year 687 with the body of St. Cuthbert, bishop near Lindesfarne. Two hundred years later Danish invaders sacked the holy compound, carrying with them the remains of Cuthbert. In 1104 the carved wooden casket was opened and the Gospel, a manuscript written in uncial, was found perfectly preserved.

637 CAESAREA Caesarea Library destroyed by Arabs conquering Palestine (library was originally founded by church father Origen who died 309 AD)

590 LUXEUIL Luxeuil. Monastery founded by Columban, first monastery in Gaul. Irish Monks brought along numerous manuscripts

405 ROMAN INDEX Pope St. Innocent I, enumerating in a letter of 405 a number of apocryphal writings, rejects them as non solum repudianda sed etiam damnanda. It is the first attempt at a catalog of forbidden books. The so-called "Decretum Gelasianum" contains many more, not only apocryphal, but also heretical, or otherwise objectionable writings. It is not without reason that this catalog has been called the first "Roman Index" of forbidden books.

391 ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY Alexandrian Library destroyed under the direction of Archbishop Theophilus of Antioch (destruction of temple of Serapis)

370 PUBLIC LIBRARY ROME Public libraries, in these days there were said to be 28 public libraries in Rome

300 CENSORSHIP The first Chinese censorship law was introduced.

191 PALATINE Palatine library destroyed by fire

105 PAPER Chinese history records that papermaking was invented by Ts'ai Lun in the court of Ho'ti in Lei-yang, China. Paper had, in fact, been made in China for at least two hundred years before this date. The first papers were made from hemp, bark, and used fish nets.

104 TS'AI LOUEN Papermaking discovered in China by Ts'ai Louen (date is not very specific: it may have been 105. Name also written as: Ts'ai Lun) Material used: plant bark, discarded cotton and old fishnets.

100 ULPIA Ulpia. Bibliotheca Ulpia founded by Trajan, also serving as emperial archive

47 ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY The great Library of Alexandria was damaged by fire when Julius Caeser besieged the city. It was said at one time to contain copies and translations of all known books (scrolls), between 400,000 and 500,000. It was later ravaged by civil war in the late 200s AD and by 400, nothing was left.

-28 AUGUSTUS Augustus. Under the reign of emperor Augustus two large libraries were founded, the Palatine and the Octavian library

-39 LIBERTAS TEMPLE Libertas. Asinius Pollio establishes first public library in Rome at the Libertas Temple

-59 ACTA DIURNA The urge to inform the public of official developments and pronouncements has been a characteristic of most autocratic rulers. This urge was fulfilled in ancient Rome by the Acta Diurna ("Daily Events"), a daily gazette dating from 59 BC and attributed in origin to Julius Caesar. Handwritten copies of this early journal were posted in prominent places in Rome and in the provinces with the clear intention of feeding the populace official information.

-100 NASH PAPYRUS Nash Papyrus, oldest known biblical fragment, containing the Hebrew text of the ten commandments. Acquired in Egypt 1902 by W.L.Nash and now in Cambridge University Library.

-100 CODEX 1st C. AD By the end of this century, the form of the book had largely changed from the scroll to the codex.

-100 CODICES 1st C. BC - 1st C. AD The Romans substituted skin, or membranae, for the wood panels in codices. It is unclear just when this was done and whether membranae was similar to Medieval parchment or to the thin leather of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but it is known that there are no examples or records of this substitution prior to the Romans. Later, Romans used codices to record laws and rules of order, lending the name codes or codicils to such documents.

-150 DEAD SEA SCROLLS 150 BC - 40 AD Approximate dates of the Hebrew and Aramaic documents, Biblical and nonbiblical, found as scrolls sealed in ceramic pots in caves near the Dead Sea in 1957. Some are written on thin, whitish leather similar but not identical to parchment

-150 PAPER The first paper is made in China from macerated hemp fibers in water suspension.

-196 ROSETTA STONE The Rosetta stone is cut. It contains the same text in Egyptian hieroglyphic, Egyptian demotic, and Greek writing. It was discovered in 1799 near the mouth of the Nile and served to break the code for deciphering ancient Egyptian works.

-197 PERGAMUM 197-159 BC In the Middle East, near Pergamum, large herds of cattle are raised for skins to be made into what we now call 'parchment.'

-200 WAX TABLETS CODEX before 1st C. BC Both Greeks and Romans used wax tablets, framed and backed with wood, for note taking, orders, correspondence, and other temporary information. At times, two or more tablets were joined with thongs or cords, similar to a 3-ringed binder. The Latin name for this was codex, from the word for wood. Single wax tablets had been used earlier than this in Mesopotamia, Greece, and Etruria.

-213 CHIN TAIN SHIHUANGTI Chin Tain Shihuangti, emperor of China, issued an edict that all books should be destroyed (manuscripts on bamboo)

-295 ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY King Ptolemy I Soter enlisted the services of the orator Demetrios Phalereus, a former governor of Athens, and empowered him to collect, if he could, all the books in the inhabited world. To support his efforts, the king sent letters to all sovereigns and governors on earth requesting that they furnish works by poets and prose-writers, rhetoricians and sophists, doctors and soothsayers, historians, and all others too (Flavius Josephus). Agents were sent out to scout the cities of Asia, North Africa, and Europe. Foreign vessels calling in at Alexandria were searched routinely for scrolls and manuscripts. Transcripts were returned in due course, but the originals remained confiscated in the library. The story of the 47 AD destruction of the library is only partly true. Some 40,000 of the 700,000 volumes did go up in flames.

-443 OFFICE OF CENSOR The office of censor established in Rome in 443 BC. In Rome, as in the ancient Greek communities, the ideal of good governance included shaping the character of the people. Hence censorship would have been regarded as an honorable task.

-500 LAO TZE Lee Er, commonly known as Lao Tze, a Pre-Qin philosopher from the state of Chu at the late Chou dynasty. He is appointed by King of Chou as the head librarian at Luo Yang.

-600 WRITING SYSTEM DEVELOPED 6th C. BC General agreement among Mediterranean cultures on left-to-right writing and reading. Before that, there was L-R, R-L, top-to-bottom, and boustroph edonic (back-and-forth). The Hebrews kept R-L.

-650 PAPYRUS Papyrus. First rolls arrive in Greece from Egypt

-800 PHOENECIAN WRITING Moabite stone is created with one of the finest specimens of Phoenician writing. The letters resemble Greek.

-900 POSTAL SERVICE The very first postal service - for government use in China.

-950 LEATHER USED FOR SCROLLS Leather is made and used for scrolls and writing.

-1500 PHAISTOS DISC The 'Phaistos disc', found on the island of Crete in 1908, was produced by pressing relief-carved symbols into the soft clay, then baking it. Although it contains the germ of the idea of printing, it appears to be unique.

-1800 BOOK OF DEAD Book of the Dead, Egypt

-1900 HITTITES Hittites, from between 1900 and 1200 BC, left appr. 15,000 clay tablets

-2400 PAPYRUS Date of the earliest surviving papyrus scroll with writing.

-2500 WESTERN ASIAN SCROLLS Animal skins are used for scrolls in Western Asia.

-2697 INK The Chinese invented and perfected 'Indian Ink'. Originally designed for blacking the surfaces of raised stone-carved hieroglyphics, the ink was a mixture of soot from pine smoke and lamp oil mixed with the gelatin of donkey skin and musk. The ink invented by the Chinese philosopher, Tien-Lcheu (2697 B.C.), became common by the year 1200 B.C. Other cultures developed inks using the natural dyes and colors derived from berries, plants and minerals. In early writings, different colored inks had ritual meaning attached to each color.

-3500 SUMERIAN CLAY TABLETS Sumerians use cuneiform alphabet, pressed in clay with a triangular stylus. Clay tablets were dried and/or fired for longevity. Some even had clay envelopes, which were also inscribed. Some people consider them to be the earliest form of the book.