105 A.D. Chinese invent "rag" paper (literally made from rags).
618-906 T'ang Dynasty wood block printing of characters.
650-750 Old English epic poem Beowulf.
700 Arabs brought wood block printing to West.
1000 Chinese movable clay type. 1200 First novel, Japanese The Tale of the Genji.
1234 Korean movable metal type (development of Hangul alphabet).
1340-1400 Writings of Geoffrey Chaucer.
1446? Johannes Gutenberg's printing press.
1455 First printed Bible (plus Torah, both from Hebrew Mid-East. Other religious works from Arab Mid-East and Greece).
1529 Protestant Reformation (Martin Luther).
1608-1674 John Milton, essay Areopagitica.
1620 First news sheets in Holland. 1638 First "New World" book producer (Cambridge Press). John Harvard gift of 300 books to Newtowne College (which is then named after him).
1640 First daily news sheets (e.g., Holland, England).
Late 1600s-Early 1700s Birth of American newspapers.
1731 Ben Franklin begins "subscription" library (first lending library).
Mid 1700s Development of American magazines.
1783 First daily U.S. paper Pennsylvania Evening Post and Daily Advertiser.
Early 1800s Application of steam power to manufacturing, transportation, print. Rapid development of print media.
1836 William Holmes McGuffey's readers used as public-supported education spreads rapidly.
1846 Pooled news services emerge. Rotary press invented.
Mid 1800s Development of steam engine trains hastens delivery of print media.
1879 New Postal Act provides special magazine rates.
1890 Linotype.
1915 Alfred Knopf starts his publishing house, features leading European authors.
1927 Bennett Cerf cofounds Random house and prints good-looking books.
1930s on? Barney Rosset, creator of Grove press, fights for publication and distribution of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer.
1935 Allen Lane creates Penguin Books (first paperbacks) In London. Robert de Graff copies idea with Pocket Books (25 cents each).
1936 DeWitt Wallace serialize first book in his Reader's Digest.
1991 Robert Maxwell (Macmillan Publishers) dies (suicide?) after illicitly shifting funds among subsidiaries in order to cover conglomerate expansion loans. (seeFurther Technological Development in Print).