Today, let's invent the book. The University of
Houston's College of Engineering presents this
series about the machines that make our
civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity
Pergamon is a name we
recognize but may have trouble placing. It's an
echo out of ancient history. Actually, Pergamon was
once among the largest cities in the world. Now
it's called Bergama. It's in Western Turkey --
South of Istanbul, North of Izmir. It sits on a
hill, 16 miles from the Aegean Sea.
Pergamon became capital of the Attalid dynasty
after 280 BC. It was one of two great centers in
the cosmopolitan world that formed after Alexander
died. The other was Alexandria, in Egypt.
The Attalids took their name from King Attalus. He
reigned until just after 200 BC. Attalus began an
artistic Renaissance in Pergamon. His son, Eumenes,
Eumenes set out to build the greatest library in
the world. He meant to outdo the famous library in
Alexandria. What followed was the stuff of black
His soldiers ranged the land stealing books. Book
lovers buried what they could in secret hiding
places. Pergamon scribes forged manuscripts. The
library grew to 200,000 volumes.
Egypt didn't take all that lying down. She quit
supplying papyrus to Pergamon. That could've ended
Pergamon's pretensions. But Pergamon scholars had
an ace up their sleeve. They had a rich wool
industry. They had plenty of sheep. And they'd
already invented a new writing medium.
They'd begun writing on sheepskin, or vellum. They
called the stuff charta pergamene.
That meant "paper of Pergamon." The words
charta pergamene mutated into
It's harder to roll parchment into a scroll than it
is papyrus. Replacing papyrus led to inventing a
whole new kind of storage. Someone thought of
cutting parchment into rectangular pages and sewing
them together. Someone invented the book.
Soon after that, both Pergamon and Egypt fell under
Roman control. Then, in 40 BC, Roman soldiers in
Egypt accidently burned part of Alexandria's
library. Anthony, in his obsessive love for
Cleopatra, did a remarkable thing. To repay the
loss, he gave the Pergamon Library to her.
So we remember Alexandria and we forget Pergamon.
But their brief competition changed human history.
Pergamon developed the book. That's the most
efficient information storage technology we've ever
known. After 2000 years it still hasn't been
replaced. The computer might change that, but it
So, next time you read the name Pergamon, remember.
It gave you one of the most important inventions
the world has ever known. It gave you the very book
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
Sarton, G., Galen of Pergamon. Lawrence,
KA: University of Kansas Press, 1954, Chapter II.
Hansen, E.V., The Attalids of
Pergamon. 2nd ed., Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1971.
I'm grateful to Frank Holt and Pericles Ktonis for
help with this episode.
Bibliophiles might prefer that I had introduced the
old Latin word codex for the first books.
I'll excuse myself on the basis that the Germanic
word "book" is more elegant. It traces back to the
Gothic word boka, which means a letter of
the alphabet. Codex literally means
the trunk of a tree or a block of wood.
The Engines of Our Ingenuity is
Copyright © 1988-1997 by John H.
Episode | Search Episodes |