STORIES OF USEFUL INVENTIONS, excerpt
By S. E. Forman
1911
THE BOOK
We must look to Egypt for the origin of the material form of our book as well as for the origin of our alphabetical characters. Before history had dawned the Egyptians had covered over with their writing nearly all the available surface on their pyramids and in their temples. At a time too far back for a date necessity seems to have compelled them to seek a substitute for stone. This they found in the papyrus plant, which grew in great luxuriance in the valley of the Nile. They placed side by side strips of the pith of the papyrus, and across these at right angles they placed another layer of strips. The two layers were then glued together and pressed until a smooth surface was formed. This made one sheet. To make a book a number of sheets were fastened together end to end. When in book form the papyrus was wound around a stick and kept in the form of a roll, a volume. The roll was usually eight or ten inches wide, but its length might be upward of a hundred feet. This papyrus roll was the parent of our modern paper book, as the word papyrus is the original of our word paper. The pen used in writing upon papyrus was a split reed (calamus), and the ink a mixture of soot and gum.
What is the central idea of this paragraph?
a) Egyptians liked to record information without the use of alphabetical characters.
b) Papyrus was less useful than stone in recording information in ancient Egypt.
c) Stone became the Egyptians' preferred material for recording information.
d) The Egyptians created papyrus as a material to record their information on after using all the room on their stone surfaces.