A codex is the form that most books take today: paper is cut up into leaves and bound between two covers. Each leaf contains two pages of writing – one on each side. Invented in the late first century, it replaced the scroll in the third and fourth centuries.
To us a codex is simply a book, but when they first appeared it was called a codex. Back then when you said “book”, people thought of a scroll. Jesus did not open a book – he unrolled it!
Because it uses both sides of the paper, a codex requires only half as much paper as a scroll. It could also fit more paper into a smaller space. This meant that even an early codex could replace a box of four or five scrolls. Because of the covers, the paper could be much thinner than in a scroll, so over time the difference became even greater. All this made a codex much easier to carry.
Not just easier to carry, but also easier to use: to go from one page to another you did not have to go through all the pages in between. So you could go to a given page much more quickly. This made it easier to follow a line of argument and to do research. You could bookmark several places in the book and move quickly between them. Scrolls had bookmarks too, but moving between them was a pain.
The codex is such a good invention that even in this age of invention it still holds its ground. E-books, for example, have made almost no headway against the codex.
And yet even so, it took over 300 years for the codex to replace the scroll. And even then it may have succeeded less on its merits and more because of a change in religion in the Roman Empire: Christians preferred the codex over the scroll and the codex did not become the preferred form till most people were Christians! The four gospels required four scrolls but only one codex.
The codex was invented at least twice. It was invented a second time in the 1100s in Japan as the butterfly book. Because the ink they used went through paper, however, only one side of a leaf had writing on it, so it did not have the advantages of the Western codex.
Both the Japanese and the Mayans invented a book form halfway between the scroll and the codex: the folded book. Instead of rolling the paper to make a scroll, it was folded between each page to fold up into something very similar to a codex. The Japanese called it an orihon, a folding book, and even added covers.
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At one point in time the butterfly book also used butterfly’s as a second reference!
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The codex is such a good invention that even in this age of invention it still holds its ground. E-books, for example, have made almost no headway against the codex.
This is about to change. I have a Sony 700 Reader. I used to purchase books (preferrably hardcovers), so this little contraption came in handy in that I didn’t have to carry several heavy books around, hell, I didn’t even have to carry one hardcover around! As most people know, carrying such weigh around can wreak havoc on a persons back, besides carrying around a large purse as well!
At first I was hesitant in buying the electronic reading device. However, as with everything electronic, the improvements have been extensive. The sales for Amazon Kindle for example have grown to be that in the hundreds of millions of dollars (for the device and ebboks) and there are sure to be more as Kindle is now international. You can also read newspapers and magazine on Kindle, you can’t as yet on Sony Reader.
The varieties of books available have grown also so there is a lot of choice. There are also more reading devices being developed and if not already on the market will soon be. Some are even speacialized. I think in the near future, most schools will eventually use reading devices instead of text books.
The usages are many! The Sony Reader is also compatible with PDFs, Word and rtfs. I have copied books off of Project Gutenburg and other sites where the copywrights has expired on the books so that they are free and transferred them to the Reader. I am also able to store the files on my hard drive. the only thing I don’t like about these devices is the DRMs when buying current books. You cannot store the files and move them in and out or around your hard drive. If your computer crashes, you will have to re-download and they only give you so many downloads of a book. Overall, a much more preferrable reading experience for myself as I can read several books at the same time without having to carry them around!
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