incunabula

n. first stages in the development of anything; books from the early days of printing (especially those printed before 1500)

n. first stage in the development of anything; books from the early days of printing (especially those printed before 1500)

An incunabulum is a book, single sheet, or image that was printed — not  handwritten — before the year 1501 in Europe. These are very rare and valuable items. The origin of the word is the Latin incunabula for "swaddling clothes", used by extension for the infancy or early stages of something. The first recorded use of incunabula as a printing term is in a pamphlet by Bernhard von Mallinckrodt, De ortu et progressu artis typographicae ("Of the rise and progress of the typographic art"), (Cologne, 1639), which includes the phrase prima typographicae incunabula, "the first infancy of printing", a term to which he arbitrarily set an end, 1500, which still stands as a convention. The term came to denote the printed books themselves from the late seventeenth century. The plural is incunabula and the word is sometimes Anglicized to incunable. A former term is fifteener, referring to the fifteenth century.
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(pl. )
of Incunabulum
  

A book which was printed before 1500 AD, in the dawn of publishing

incunabula /,inkju:'næbjulə/
danh từ số nhiều thời kỳ phôi thai, thời kỳ ban đầu những cuốn sách in đầu tiên (trước năm 1500)
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