2000 B.C.: The earliest known attempts by man to record his thoughts are the cave paintings at Chauvet Cave in France, completed at the end of the Ice Age.

4000 B.C.: Egyptians start using hieroglyphics to write books on scrolls of papyrus, which is the origin of the word “paper.” Papyrus comes from the tall green plant that grows along the Nile River. Stems are pressed together and glued to make scrolls.

3000 B.C.: Sumerians use clay tablets as platforms for their form of writing, later switching to papyrus.

150 B.C.: King Eumenes of Pergamon (in Asia) starts to use parchment, a writing surface made from scraped and hardened animal skins, to replace papyrus, which Egypt refuses to sell him. By A.D. 400 and the fall of the Roman Empire, Europeans have shifted most of their writing to parchment or vellum, another animal-skin product.

100 B.C.: About this time, the Chinese invent paper. They later learn how to mass-produce it in paper mills, using mulberry bark and hemp rags. It starts to spread around the world in about A.D. 800 as a much cheaper and easier substitute for writing.

A.D. 400: The earliest books start to appear and will replace scrolls as the primary way to record text. In Europe, monks may spend as much as one year copying and illustrating a Bible by hand, using quill pens on vellum. Most manuscripts remain locked up in monasteries, unavailable to outsiders.

A.D. 850: A Buddhist religious text from China is the earliest example of block printing.

A.D. 1200: The creation of universities in Europe spurs a huge demand for new, secular books on scientific and natural topics that can be satisfied only by laboriously copying books by hand. Scholars can learn about which books exist only by word of mouth and cannot always obtain copies.

A.D. 1453: Johannes Gutenberg invents movable type, revolutionizing the Western world and allowing wide publication of books in Europe. Gutenberg’s invention followed movable-type machines already operating in Korea and China, but his modification of a wine press changes the West.

A.D. 1501: There are 1,000 print shops in Europe, printing 35,000 titles. The publication of books, including texts that the Crusaders brought back based on Greek and Roman texts, launches a new age of science by allowing scientists and mathematicians to read and compare observations for the first time.

A.D. 1969: An initiative launched by the U.S. Department of Defense to link computers in the event of nuclear war comes to fruition when four university computer systems are joined for the first time. This connection ultimately leads to the Internet.

A.D. 1971: Project Gutenberg is launched in Illinois. It is a revolutionary plan to create electronic versions of all books in the public domain that can be easily accessible to everyone.

A.D. 1980: Software engineers start to develop the World Wide Web, a forum in which personal computer users can communicate over the Internet. Their research leads to the creation of Web browsers and search engines. Within 20 years, new forms of commerce have been created.

A.D. 2004: Google Book Search, a project by the search engine company to create a digital copy of every book in the world, is launched. The Institute for the Future of Books is created at USC.

A.D. 2007: Continuing experiments in new forms of literature are under way worldwide, including programs that let users easily create their own online books, complete with text, images, video and sound.