On the other hand, communication via such media was incredibly difficult. Think, for example, of the distributional problems the Postal Service would have today if the medium of correspondence were 100lb rocks. They have enough troubles with 1/2-oz letters. A medium of communication that was lightweight and portable was needed. The first successful medium was papyrus (sheets made from the papyrus plant and glued together to form a roll sometimes 20 to 40 ft long, fastened to a wooden roller), which came into use about 2000 B.C. In 190 B.C., parchment (made from animal skins) came into use. The Greeks assembled large libraries in Ephesus and Pergamum (in what is now Turkey) and in Alexandria. According to Plutarch, the library in Pergamum contained 2,00,000 volumes in 40 B.C. (Tuchman, 1980). In 105 A.D. the Chinese invented paper, the modern medium of communication. However, because there was no effective way of duplicating communication, scholarly knowledge could not be widely disseminated. Perhaps the greatest single invention in the intellectual history of the human race was the printing press. Although movable type was invented in China in about 1100 A.D. (Tuchman, 1980), the Western World gives credit to Gutenberg, who printed his 42-line Bible from movable type on a printing press in 1455 A.D. Gutenberg’s invention was…