In most people’s minds the words innovation and hi-tech go together so how come we can claim an innovative Information Technology Revolution circa 170BC? There was one and it led to what might have been the forerunner of the “format wars”, the equivalent of 8-track v the compact cassette, Betmax v VHS, and more recently HD-DVD v Blu-ray, albeit at a much slower pace.
First we need to recall that innovation is actually about bringing to practical reality some novel and useful idea. The fact that it’s useful implies that this innovation meets some kind of need, otherwise it would not be particularly useful. There is no inherent requirement for a technology to be involved at all, however in this case there was, although we may have trouble recognising that today.
According to the OED, Information Technology is about the use of systems such as computers and telecommunications for storing, retrieving, and sending information. There is little by way of computers to be found in Ancient Greece. They did however store, retrieve and send information.
The technology, and technology it was, was plainly much simpler then. The Egyptians used papyrus scrolls and ink. Others used tanned animal hide and some tablets of stone. The Romans used wax tablets as well. These comprised two or three thin wooden frames filled with wax and tied together at one side forming something similar to pages.This led to another ancient innovation that we still benefit from today, the codex or book, but its not the innovation that I primarily have in mind.
No, the one I have in mind is parchment!
Pergamum was a Greek city in Asia Minor, now Turkey and near the modern city of Bergama. It was the heart of a successful kingdom under Roman suzerainty. King Eumenes II ruled Pergamum from 197BC to 159BC and he, it seems, was responsible for the need and the innovation that resulted in parchment, a material that is still in use today, some 2100 years later.
At the kingdom’s height, Eumenes II commissioned a library to rival that of Alexandria. He built the library by “collecting” the libraries of others, but apparently failed to gather that of Aristotle. He presumably also had some works transcribed, and may be had new works commissioned, and this is where he developed a need.
The primary writing material of the day was papyrus – from where the word paper is derived. It is made from the papyrus reed found in Egypt. For reasons which scholars dispute, Egypt stopped exporting papyrus. Perhaps they wanted to sabotage the library, perhaps they over produced and the reed beds were threatened, perhaps there was another reason all together, no one is sure. For whatever reason, King Eumenes II is reputed to have responded by commissioning the development of an alternative to papyrus: parchment made from sheep and goat hides was the result. Sheep and goats were not in short supply and were under his control.
Tanned animal skins had been used for scrolls for hundreds of years but the surface quality was poor. King Eumenes II’s innovators modified the process. They split the hide, removing the inner layer and instead of using tanning they developed a lime based process. They also stretched the skins, shaved them “paper thin” and smoothed them to achieve a very fine writing surface, perhaps using lime to finish the surface. The skins were then cut into sheets and were also joined to form scrolls.
It was the Romans, however, who innovated again by combining the concept of the wax tablet and parchment to develop the codex. A codex is a book, although the term has specialist uses today. The Romans folded the parchment and sewed it into a note book which was more convenient than the wax tablet. Papyrus was also used for the pages of codices. The codex format was much more convenient than scrolls and almost always used for Biblical texts. It had become the dominant format by the 4th century AD.
So, there is the “information technology” innovation, two in fact and they both fit the SCAMPER model. The innovators probably did not have such an explicit model, but who knows? After all SCAMPER is only an aid to help us think. The Pergamum innovators obviously had a problem to solve and thought it through. The Roman innovators may not have had a specific problem statement but perhaps someone simply saw the possibilities and understood the advantages.
The first innovation, the development of parchment was the novel Modification of the leather process to develop an improved writing material as a Substitute. Part of the hide was also Eliminated.
The second innovation was the development of the parchment codex by the Romans. They Substituted parchment for wooden framed wax tablets to end up with a light weight and durable notebook with more pages (Magnified) which could then be Put to new uses.
Ultimately parchment dramatically improved the Roman communication system because it was lighter and more compact than the formats it replaced which meant that it was easier for couriers to communicate information thorough out the empire – back to ancient IT.
In some ways the first codex may be a bit like Apple’s iPad.
Someone came up with the great idea for a parchment notebook. He understood the disadvantages and poor user-experience of the wax tablet and did something radical and new. He devised a new format to make things better- parchment v wax tablet (not to forget codex v scroll). Everyone used to wax tablets, probably asked “What on earth are you playing at?” and commented, “Can’t see a use for that; definitely not a new category of device”. “it will never win out over Betamx – sorry, scroll”. What did they know…….
Do you know any other Ancient Innovations?
SCAMPER is an acronym for a set of prompts to ask yourself questions about how you can do something new with an existing product or service.
Substitute:
Is there any part that you can substitute with something else?
Combine:
Is there anything that you can combine to make something different?
Adapt:
Can you make it different by adapting some element of the product or service?
Magnify:
Can you improve or change it by making something bigger or adding more of some aspect?
Put to New Use:
Can you simply use what you have got differently?
Eliminate:
Can you take anything out or reduce something in some way?
Rearrange:
Can you do something in a different order to make a difference?
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