The development of printing from movable type in the mid-15th century provides a particularly telling illustration. In both form and content, books printed on Johann Gutenberg's ingenious adaptation of the wine presses of the Rhineland attempted to imitate the appearance of manuscripts. Some printed books went even further in mimicking manuscript volumes by leaving blank spaces for the addition of hand-illuminated capitals, a feature of manuscript books since the early Middle Ages. Early printed books imitated the appearance of manuscript volumes in another important respect. The contents of these bulky volumes differed little from the products of manuscript culture.
Electronic books are, at present, in a similarly rudimentary state of evolution.
Given that most people are highly conservative in cultural matters, there is good commercial sense in this, just as there was good reason for early printers' determination to make their books resemble manuscript volumes. This will inevitably change, sooner rather than later if the history of the printed books is anything to go by. By 1500, a mere 50 years after the Gutenberg Bible, books had undergone a radical change in design. By 1480 at the latest, though probably some years earlier, the typeface known as roman, based on the handwriting of Italian Humanists, had come into use. These elegant typefaces encouraged speed of reading and therefore triggered a cultural, social and political revolution which would influence every aspect of life.