German Museum of Books and Writing "Signs - Books - Networks"

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  Portrait of Peter Hammer, etching, around 1810

  Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig

  1660

  The Amsterdam publisher Elzevier uses the fake imprint “Pierre Marteau chez Cologne“ for the first time.
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  Painted camera obscura picture

  © Sammlung Werner Nekes

  1686

  The German optician and astronomer Johann Zahn builds a portable Camera Obscura.
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  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, memorial by Ernst Julius Hähnel, situated on the grounds of Leipzig University, 1883

  privat

  around 1690

  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz presents the most advanced model of his calculating machine.
• 1710

  Engraver Jakob Christoph Le Blon invents three- and four-colour printing in London/Paris.
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  German brand label with the Titania wordmark and typewriter, undated

  Deutsches Buch- und Schriftmuseum der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Leipzig

  1714

  The British inventor Henry Mill receives the patent for a typewriter (which is never built).
• 1728

  Ephraim Chambers publishes the first lexicon to contain cross references, the Cyclopædia.
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  Opened double-page from Johann Heinrich Zedler’s Großes vollständiges Universallexikon aller Wissenschaften und Künste (Great Complete Encyclopaedia of All Sciences and Arts) and beside that two further volumes seen from the rear)

  Deutsches Buch- und Schriftmuseum der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Leipzig

  1730

  The first volume of Zedlers Universallexikon is published in Leipzig.
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  Portrait of Gerard van Swieten, copperplate etching by Reinier Vinkeles, 1773

  Deutsches Buch- und Schriftmuseum der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Leipzig

  1759

  Gerard van Swieten effects a relaxation in the censorship regulations in his capacity as head of the Court Academic and Book Censorship Commission.
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  Verzeichniß abgenommener und in Sessione den 30ten May 1760 vertilgter Bücher (Index of confiscated books destroyed in the sessions of May 1760), handwritten, 1760

  Deutsches Buch- und Schriftmuseum der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Leipzig

  1760

  The German censor Gerard van Swieten composed his list of books to be destroyed.
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  Johann Gottfried Herder, portrait by Anton Graff, 1785

  Gleimhaus Halberstadt / Wikimedia Commons

  1772

  Johann Gottfried Herder publishes his influential Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache (Essay on the Origin of Language).