105 to 1711

This page of the timeline covers -

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

     105

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

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

1066 regime change in England

1085 metal type is used to print books in Korea

1086 Domesday Book

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

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

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

1455 discovery of Tacitus' Germania

1455 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

1494 Luca Pacioli's Summa de Arithmetica popularises double-entry bookkeeping

1494 Pietro Bembo's de Aetna features first printed semicolon

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

1531 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

1545 Venetian Council of Ten demands that booksellers secure documentary proof that works are printed with author's permission

     1550

1550 wallpaper arrives in Europe from China

1557 de Vitoria's De Indis Noviter Inventis

1559 Pope Paul IV issues Index of Forbidden Books

1559 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

1566 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

1604 King James Bible

1605 Avisa Relation oder Zeitung, world's first regular newspaper

1612 Napier makes first printed use of decimal point

1612 Bacon's On Usury

1613 de Suarez' Defensio Fidei Catholicae

1620 Bacon's Novum Organum

1622 Weekly News, first English newspaper

1622 first newspaper advertisement in England

1625 Grotius' De Jure Belli ac Pacis

1627 France introduces registered mail

     1630

1631 French newspaper carries classified ads

1631 Spee's Cautio Criminalis

1635 Académie Francaise founded

1636 Harvard founded

1636 futures market for tulip bulbs in Netherlands

1637 René Descartes' Discourse de la méthod

1637 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

1640 Athanasius Kirchner's magic lantern

1642 mezzotint

1642 Pascal's mechanical calculator

1643 Vesalius' De humani corporis fabrica libri septem

1643 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

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

1659 first cheque drawn in London

     1660

1660 Office of Postmaster General and Comptroller of The Post Office established in UK

1662 mass-production of the pencil

1662 John Graunt's Observations on the Bills of Mortality

1662 Antoine Arnauld's La logique, ou l'art de penser

1663 Erbauliche Monaths-Unterredungen, Europe's first magazine

1665 Robert Hooke's Micrographia

1665 Great Plague of London

1666 first European printed paper banknote

1666 Hornius' Arca Noae

1668 Riksens Staenders Bank (later Svenska Riksbanken) is first central bank

     1670

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

1689 Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration

     1690

1690 papermill in Moscow

1690 John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

1690 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

1697 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

George Berkeley's A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge




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