105 to 1711

This page of the timeline covers -

• 800
• 1000
• 1300
• 1500
• 1550
• 1600
• 1650
• 1690

     105

supposed date for Chinese eunuch Ts'ai Lun's invention of paper

150

earliest known rag paper (fragment discovered in Turkestan in 1904)

534

Corpus Juris Civilis

     700

793

caliph Haroun-el-Raschid establishes paper factory in Baghdad, with Chinese workmen

     800

first movable type printing system uses clay characters

808

woodblocks used to print text of Diamond Sutra scroll

868

woodblocks used to print paginated books in China

     900

983

printed collection of Buddhist texts in China runs to 250,000 pages

     1000

1006

supernova

1023

paper money printed in China

1035

paper recycled in Japan

1066

Westminster Abbey opened

regime change in England

1085

metal type is used to print books in Korea

1086

Domesday Book in England

1088

University of Bologna founded

1095

First Crusade

     1100

1116

stitched bindings for books in China

1140

paper made in Egypt using recycled mummy-wrappers

1155

map of western China is the oldest known printed map

     1200

contrary to predictions, world doesn't end

1210

St Francis founds Franciscans

1215

Magna Carta

1236

Mongol empire issues paper money

1255

papermill in Genoa

1259

Provisions of Westminster

1267

Statute of Marlborough

1271

free daily newspapers and mass-circulation booklets in China

1282

paper watermarks produced in Italy

1285

spectacles invented in Italy

1298

Travels of Marco Polo published

     1300

1309

first recorded use of paper in England

1311

Lincoln Cathedral exceeds height of Great Pyramid of Giza

1348

papermill in Troyes

1351

Ayutthaya founded

1390

papermill in Nuremberg

1397

oldest surviving Korean text printed from movable type

     1400

1423

Europeans start using Chinese method of block printing text

1450

newsletters begin circulating in Europe

1451

Gutenberg uses press to print poem and Papal indulgences

1452

metal plates used in printing in Europe

1453

Mehmet II conquers Constantinople

1455

Gutenberg publishes the Bible

discovery of Tacitus' Germania

Chinese abandon paper money after 7 years of hyperinflation

1464

French king establishes postal service

1466

Alberti's polyalphabetic cipher

1476

Caxton produces first book printed in English

1477

first handbill advertisement in England

1492

Columbus misses China, discovers America

1493

earliest known etching

1494

papermill in Hertford

Luca Pacioli's Summa de Arithmetica popularises double-entry bookkeeping

Pietro Bembo's de Aetna features first printed semicolon

1495

Maximilian I establishes Reichskammergericht

1499

earliest known printed page numbers, in Perotti's Cornucopia

     1500

1501

italic characters used in Aldus Manutius's Virgil

1508

earliest known German coloured woodcut, by Hans Burgkmair the Elder

1509

Pacioli's De viribus quantitatis

1513

Machiavelli's Il Principe

1516

Erasmus' The Education of a Christian Prince - "In a free state, tongues too should be free"

1518

Trithemius produces first printed Western book on cryptology

1521

Cambridge University Press established

1522

Luther's translation of New Testament published

1527

Sack of Rome

1531

death of Burgkmair

Emblematum liber published in Augsburg

1532

Vermin Act in England

1534

first Frankfurt Book Fair

1537

Ordonnance de Montpellier of François I of France

1539

Pablos sets up press in Mexico City

1540

Recorde invents the equal (=) sign

1543

Copernicus's On the Revolution of Heavenly Spheres

1545

Garamond designs printing typeface

Venetian Council of Ten demands that booksellers secure documentary proof that works are printed with author's permission

     1550

wallpaper arrives in Europe from China

1557

de Vitoria's De Indis Noviter Inventis

1559

Pope Paul IV issues Index of Forbidden Books

Plantin's Polyglot Bible

1560

camera obscura allows precise tracing of an image

1565

lead pencil

1566

one of the world's first newspapers, Notizie Scritte, in Venice

Manutius' Orthographiae Ratio

1569

Mercator projection

1570

Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum atlas

1571

Paul IV issues first formal Index Librorum Prohibitorum

1572

John Day introduces Roman type into England

1576

Bodin's Les Six Livres de la République

1582

Gregorian Calendar

1587

Oxford University Press founded

1593

Hooker's Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity

1598

Gentili's De Jure Belli

     1600

1604

Cawdrey's A Table Alphabeticall, first English dictionary

King James Bible

1605

Avisa Relation oder Zeitung, world's first regular newspaper

1607

Donne's Biathanatos

1612

Napier makes first printed use of decimal point

Bacon's On Usury

1613

de Suarez' Defensio Fidei Catholicae

1620

Bacon's Novum Organum

1622

Weekly News, first English newspaper

first newspaper advertisement in England

1623

Dutch East India Co. granted right of perpetual existence

1625

Grotius' De Jure Belli ac Pacis

1627

France introduces registered mail

     1630

1631

French newspaper carries classified ads

Spee's Cautio Criminalis

1635

Académie Francaise founded

1636

Harvard founded

futures market for tulip bulbs in Netherlands

1637

René Descartes' Discourse de la méthod

tulip mania ceases in Holland in precursor of dot-com crash

1639

first North American printing of books (Freeman's Oath and An Almanack)

     1640

Athanasius Kirchner's magic lantern

1642

mezzotint invented

1642

Pascal's mechanical calculator

1643

Vesalius' De humani corporis fabrica libri septem

Copernicus' De Revolutionibus

1645

launch of Post och Inrikes Tidningar, claimed to be "oldest still-existing newspaper"

1646

Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica

1648

Treaty of Westphalia

     1650

slide rule invented by Gunter and Oughtred

Usher's Annales Veteris at Novi Testamenti

Hobbes' The leviathan

1652

first mint in North America

1653

mail boxes in Paris for postage-paid letters

1654

British East India Company adopts rule of perpetual existence

1659

first cheque drawn in London

     1660

Office of Postmaster General and Comptroller of The Post Office established in UK

1662

mass-production of the pencil

John Graunt's Observations on the Bills of Mortality

Antoine Arnauld's La logique, ou l'art de penser

1663

Erbauliche Monaths-Unterredungen, Europe's first magazine

1665

Robert Hooke's Micrographia

Great Plague of London

1666

first European printed paper banknote

Hornius' Arca Noae

1668

Riksens Staenders Bank (later Svenska Riksbanken) is first central bank

     1670

sanctity of the jury established in case of Penn and Mead

1672

Pufendorf's On the Laws of Nature and of Nations

1673

Leibniz's mechanical calculator

1674

Moreri's Grand Dictionnaire Historique

1676

William Petty's Political Arithmetick

     1680

1681

Bossuet's Discours sur l'histoire universelle

1687

Newton's Principia Mathematica

1689

first US newspaper, Publick Occurrences Both Forreign & Domestick, printed in Massachusetts

Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration

     1690

papermill in Moscow

Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Locke's Two Treatises on Civil Government

1692

Salem witch trials

1694

Bank of England issues printed banknotes (with watermarks from 1697)

1695

Bank of Scotland founded

1697

Bayle's Dictionnaire Historique et Critique

Blasphemy Act in England

     1700

1701

Mead's A Mechanical Account of Poisons in Several Essays

1702

The Daily Courant, first UK daily newspaper

1703

Peter II founds St Petersburg

1704

first newspaper advertisements in N America

1706

The Evening Post, first evening newspaper issued in London

1709

first British Copyright Act

     1710

three-colour printing invented in West by Le Blon

Berkeley's A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge




    next page  (1712-1790)