1. IN THE BEGINNING THERE WERE PAPER

The recording of numbers appears to pre-date the emergence of writing and excavations of the clay tablets of civilisations in the Middle East have shown that clay tablets were used to keep account of activities under-taken in a systematic fashion. Correspondingly, various forms of abacus have been used types of calculation from the Sumerian abacus dating from about 4 thousand years ago to the Chinese abacus (Suanpan) from around 2 thousand years ago. As time passed various forms of writing were developed using animal hides, which were developed as vellum and papyrus which eventually de-veloped into paper. Wood block printing, also, was a very ancient art and movable type printing had been utilised in the far East but the development of movable type page setting in Europe transformed the process of printing. I