[Sigia-l] Page numbers in a book (fw)

[Christopher Fahey [askrom]]

> 75 years, even in slow times, is a pretty long time. I'm 
> wondering *why* it
> would take that long to arrive at page numbering. Was it more of a
> procedural problem (binding, printing, etc) or a conceptual 
> one? If the latter, why so long?

My guess is that page numbering originated to make print production
easier. I am imagining that page numbering was initially used by
printers and bookbinders to keep their pages organized - that is, to
keep the plates organized and to keep the printed papers in the correct
order before binding them. When copying texts by hand, it was probably
pretty clear which page was to be worked on next (I'm not sure, but were
the books bound before being inscribed, or after?), but in a print shop
with lots of pages and type to manage, some kind of numbering system was
probably really useful.

I wonder if page numbers migrated from being small numbered printer's
marks in the margins of the pages (where they would only be used by the
printers) onto the pages themselves, where readers and librarians and
researchers started to find them and use them? 

Even today some printers and bookbinders nostalgiacally include
'signature marks' - a kind of "meta-" page-numbering to keep the bound
signatures (the bundles of internally-bound pages that comprise the
structure of most books) themselves in sequence. Which, if you think
about it, is silly for a book which had numbers in it! Putting
signatures in order is easy if all the pages have numbers on them!
According to this:
  http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/don/dt/dt3111.html
... signature marks first appeared directly printed into books in 1472,
which would suggest that at that date there were still books without
printed page numbers.

Anyway, perhaps this is a rare instance of where meeting the engineers'
needs ended up being really beneficial to the end user?

-Cf

[christopher eli fahey]
art: http://www.graphpaper.com
sci: http://www.askrom.com
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