闻香识书

If youre into reading, youll probably have noticed how a brand new book has a rather special smell. Yes, its that new book smell—and its quite different from the smell of an older book. Whats going on?

Books have been around for about 4,500 years. Some of the earliest books come from the fifth dynasty of Egypt, about 2,400 BC. They were written on papyrus—similar to modern paper, but thicker.

They made papyrus sheets by weaving together the stems of the papyrus plant into a sheet, and then smoothing out the bumps by pounding the woven sheet with some kind of mallet. But these were scrolls, a continuous roll of paper, rather than “the book” as we think of it today, which is a collection of individual sheets, stuck together along one edge so that the pages hinge on that side.

The book, in its modern form, began to appear around the first century AD. These books had the advantages of being easier to read than a scroll, easier to find a specific page, and you could stack them more efficiently than you could with scrolls.

In the early days, books were heavy and cumbersome. Each book had to be made individually by hand—with every word on every page written by a scribe.

So by 800 AD, a large library might hold only 500 books. Around 1045 AD, the Chinese inventor, Bi Sheng, came up with movable type made of earthenware—mud or clay, not metal.

Unfortunately, neither his printing press nor any books made with it have yet been found.

So the credit usually goes to Johannes Gutenberg for devising the printing press with movable type. He independently invented it around 1450 AD.

Suddenly, books could be produced much more rapidly. Adding steam power meant that by 1800 AD, a printing press could deliver over 1,000 sheets per hour.

So, where does the smell come from? Three sources—the paper, the ink and the glue.

The Chinese first came up with paper like our modern paper around 200 AD. This invention slowly spread westward to Muslim countries, and then to Europe.

Now theres a big difference between a lump of wood, and a sheet of paper. The wood has to be crushed, and then chemicals have to be used.

Chemicals have to be added to make the wood fibres swell, to remove acid, to bleach the paper to the desired grade of whiteness, to confer some degree of water resistance, to add a sheen to the paper, and so on.

Thats part of the smell: each chemical comes with its own odour.

And there are many different inks. Some inks fade with time, while others get darker.

Theres a huge range of glues that can be used to bind the sheets together along one side to form a hinge. Different glues again would be used to attach the covers, whether hardcover or paperback.

So you can see that there is an enormous range of different chemicals that can waft out of the freshly opened pages of your brand new book.

Even within the books of one publishing house, there would be many different chemicals used, depending on the purpose of the book. A cheap black-and-white paperback would use quite different chemicals compared to an expensive coffee table book with glossy colour pages.

The whole situation gets more complicated again as the book degrades. Not only will the inks and glues age and break down at their own rates, so too will the lignin and the cellulose in the paper.

Today, the evolution of books has continued into the digital revolution, with eBooks. They might be convenient, but you cant give your copy to another person as a present, and they dont smell as nice.

在中国古代，读书人多有在书页中夹芸香草驱蠹的习惯。草有清香之气，打开书后香气袭人，这便是书香一说的来源。如今，风习不再，崭新的书却不乏扑鼻而来的独特气味，旧书亦如此，有时是淡淡的杏仁味儿，有时是香草味儿，有时是花香宜人……难道书中不仅有黄金屋和颜如玉？

如果你爱读书，可能你曾注意到：一本崭新的书会散发出一股奇特的气味。没错，那就是新书的味道，与旧书的相去甚远。其中奥妙何在？

书的历史可追溯至大概4500年之前。公元前2400年左右，埃及第五王朝的一些书应属最早的书籍之一了。它们用的是莎草纸——与现代纸张相似，但较之更厚。

埃及人把莎草的茎梗编织在一起，做成一大张莎草纸，然后用类似于木槌的工具连续砸击其凹凸不平的表面，使纸变得平滑。但那时用的纸都是卷轴，即长长的一卷纸，而非我们所以为的现代意义上的“书籍”——纸被裁成一张一张的，沿一侧粘贴起来，形成书脊。

公元1世纪左右，现代书籍开始出现，这样的书籍与卷轴相比更便于阅读，更容易翻到某一页，也能更好地摞起来。

早期书籍过于笨重，成书过程复杂烦琐。 每本书都是“手工”制作——古代抄写员一字一句誊写在书页上。

因此，公元800年时，一家“大型”图书馆的藏书量可能仅有500本。公元1045年左右，中国的发明家毕昇发明了泥活字——使用泥土或黏土制版，而不是金属。

不幸的是，他的印刷机和用之印制的书籍尚未被发现。

所以，人们常常将活字印刷机的发明归功于约翰尼斯·古登堡——他在公元1450年左右独立发明了活字印刷机。

忽然之间，书籍得以更快速地生产出来。到了公元1800年，蒸汽动力出现之后，一台印刷机1小时就能印刷1000余张纸。

那么，书的气味究竟从何而来？源头有三： 纸、墨、胶。

公元200年左右，中国首先造出了类似现代纸张的纸。这项发明慢慢向西传到伊斯兰国家，然后再传入欧洲。

一块木頭和一张纸看上去差异巨大。木材必须碾碎，然后使用各种化学药品进行处理。

加入化学药品，使木质纤维膨胀，去除酸液，漂白纸张至想要的白度，使其具有一定的防水性，增添其光泽度，造纸需要进行上述等一系列的处理工艺。

每一种化学药品都具有自己独特的气味，这就是书气味的部分来源。

印刷时还会使用许多不同种类的油墨。随着时间的推移，一些墨水慢慢褪色，另一些则越来越深。

沿书页一侧粘贴书脊时可用的胶水也是五花八门。同样，在粘贴封面时——无论是精装还是平装——也会用到不同的胶水。

因此，当你刚刚打开一本崭新的书时，一大堆各种各样的化学品的气味扑鼻而来。

即使是同一个出版社的书，书的定位不同，所用的化学品亦会不同。单色的廉价平装书所用的化学品必然与亮丽的彩色印刷的昂贵咖啡桌配书完全不同。

随着书籍的年头越来越长，情况又愈加复杂起来。不光油墨和胶水会以各自的速度老化、分解，纸张中的木质素和纤维素也同样在降解。

如今，随着电子书的诞生，书籍的进化已经进入了数字革命时代。电子书倒是携带方便，可是你没法将它们作为礼物赠送他人，而且它们闻起来可没有纸书这么好。

Vocabulary

papyrus  n. 纸莎草纸

smooth  v. 抚平；抹平

efficiently  adv. 效率高地

cumbersome  adj. 复杂而低效的； 大而笨重的

devise  v. 设计；发明；策划；想出

source  n. 来源；产地； (困难的)根源，原因

remove  v. (用化学品)去除，洗掉(污渍)