O codex, where art thou?

I've been looking into a recent Atlantic article (November 2013) on The 50 Greatest Breakthroughs Since the Wheel. It's a good read and a nice list featuring the usual suspects of technological breakthroughs, including the steam engine (no. 8), optical lenses (5), penicilin (3) and electricity (2). Also there are some chioces that I didn't see coming, such as cement (37) and air-conditioning (44). And unsurprisingly (?), at the top of the list, and with a great deal of consensus among the 12 scientists, historians and technologist asked to compile the list, the printing press.

The importance of the printing press is described as the point when "knowledge began freely replicating and quickly assumed a life of its own." As a book scholar, albeit of digital books in particular, I wouldn't exactly disagree. By the way, the Internet made it as high as no. 9.

It's notable that the invention of paper, dating back to the second century, is also acknowledged as highly important (no. 6). Another technology involved in the production and consumption of books and printed material is alphabetization (25). However, I can't seem to find anywhere the carrier device per se for knowledge throughout the last centuries, the codex. The codex is the book as we know it: Leafs of paper (or other material) with writing on both sides, usually stacked and bound by fixing one edge (the spine) and protected by covers thicker than the sheets. Sometimes a definition of the codex only emcompasses manuscript (handwritten documents), but I would argue that the technology really is more to do with the way text is displayed than the way it is inserted. It is in this sense I believe the codex deserves a place on a list of the greatest inventions.

Replacing the scroll in the third and fourth centuries AC, the codex has remained - and remains! - the dominant format for distributing knowledge. It improved upon the scroll by being more practical and economical. Not just more portable and sturdy, but enabling for instance, random access: The reader may leaf back and forth and consult any page with equal ease unlike the scroll which is organized sequentially.

In the words of Roman poet Martial (original and translation here):

You who long for my little books to be with you everywhere and want to have companions for a long journey, buy these ones which parchment confines within small pages: give your scroll-cases to the great authors - one hand can hold me. So that you are not ignorant of where I am on sale, and don't wander aimlessly through the whole city, I will be your guide and you will be certain: look for Secundus, the freedman of learned Lucensis, behind the threshold of the Temple of Peace and the Forum of Pallas.


Even today, after the advent of ebooks and the Internet, books in the codex form remain incredibly central. Building on a notion from media scholar Klaus Bruhn Jensen, I like to think of books as Institutions-to-think-with. Back to the Atlantic list: What would the impact of the printing press and paper be without the codices? What would the Gutenberg Bible had been on a scroll?