Incunabula (Latin: cradle or infancy)
Refers to the first fifty years of printing with moveable type, printing completed before 1501, a time when some books were still being hand-copied.

Printing was perhaps the most important technological change of the Renaissance. The influence on society was dramatic. It is estimated that there were somewhere between 8 and 20 million incunables printed--about 40,000 different titles. These amounts were so fantastic that some people saw printing as an invention of the devil.

In addition to books, a considerable amount of ephemeral literature, such as broadsides, cheap romances, ballads, and devotional tracts, were also printed during this period, but they have almost all been lost or exist only in fragments of waste lining bindings and in other hidden places.

The age of the Incunabula has some similarities to us in terms of technological change. During the past 10 years, the World Wide Web has changed our culture in ways equally as dramatic as those changes caused by the printing press.


See also:
Psymon.com
The Infancy of Printing
Early Printed Collections at the British Library
Gutenberg Bible

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