Before I read Tim Harford's excellent "50 things..." book [1] I had no idea how parchment was made. What struck me most was that to make books available to the

Before I read Tim Harford's excellent "50 things..." book [1] I had no idea how parchment was made. What struck me most was that to make books available to the general public, the invention of the printing press may have been less important than the (re)invention of paper: for a bible on parchment one needed 500 sheep! [1]: http://timharford.com/books/50things/ http://timharford.com/books/50things/