ABSTRACT
We live in a world of visible words. Even if we can’t read them, even if we don’t seek them out, we are, nevertheless, constantly bombarded by them. Buy Coke. Smoke Camels. Exit. Push. Pull. Like the silent butler and children in the Victorian era, text generally goes unnoticed. It wasn’t always this way. In the classical period, when text was still in its formative stages, its usefulness was hotly debated. Its forms were protean. Its potential was not realized. The technologies that writing was to spawn and continues to spawn were still unborn. The tools of the trade were barely there, much less refined. A pen was either a metal stylus or a reed pen and not a fountain pen not a ballpoint not a roller-tip not a felt tip not a crayon not a pastel not a pencil not a mechanical pencil. ‘Paper’ came in two basic varieties, papyrus and parchment, and these two types were sufficient through the Middle Ages.
