The first archaeological evidence of writing dates to around 4000 B.C., when early man scratched the surface of a moist clay tablet with a sharp tool made of bone or bronze. About 1,000 years later, the Egyptians took this one step further by writing on papyrus scrolls with brushes or pens made from reeds. At about B.C. 1300, Roman writers used a metal stylus to write on thin sheets of wax. All of these developments encouraged the art of writing. Actual literature, however, began to take shape after 600 A.D., when Europeans began writing on parchment with a pen made from a feather quill, which first appeared in Seville, Spain.
In 1452, German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg developed a process in which movable type and oil-based ink could be used to print books. As printing became more widespread, the printed word became more commonly available to the public. Before Gutenberg's printing press, books were hand-inscribed, typically by monks or scholars. This was a time-consuming process, and hand-inscribed books were rare and valuable. As a result, both reading and writing were the exclusive domain of the rich and privileged. With books now more readily available to average people, both reading and writing became more common, leading to a rise in literary works in subsequent centuries.
Although the concept of the typewriter dates back to a vaguely worded patent filed in the early 17th century, the first working typewriter was built by Italian Pellegrino Turri in 1808. The first commercially produced typewriter was the so-called "writing ball" invented by Danish pastor Malling Hansen in 1870, a device that resembled a pincushion. Far more influential, however, was the Sholes & Glidden Type Writer, which first appeared on the U.S. market in 1874. Although this model was eventually supplanted in the marketplace by other models, the Sholes & Glidden Type Writer was the first to introduce the QWERTY keyboard that was used in subsequent typewriters, and is still used in today's computer keyboards. The typewriter was a powerful tool for writers, and certainly encouraged literature because novels no longer needed to be written by hand.
In 2007, Amazon introduced its eBook reader, the Kindle. The Kindle was a groundbreaking piece of technology that allowed readers to download electronic versions of books, which were read on the Kindle's screen. Although it wasn't the first commercially available reader, the Kindle was the most influential, allowing customers to access Amazon's digital bookstore that, at the time, contained more than 90,000 eBooks. The Kindle is, in many ways, a direct descendant of the iPad, Apple's groundbreaking media device that allows the user to watch movies, listen to music and read electronic books and magazines. Devices such as this encourage reading, which in turn encourages publishers to publish more literary works in media other than print.