The History of Scientific Publishing
According to Wikipedia's Timeline of scientific experiments the first such experiment was conducted by Empedocles in the 5th century BC some 2.500 years ago. Personally i do not share this view of history after having read The Dawn of Everything which outlines how much human activity of the past is being ignored by todays accounts just because people did not have the tools to communicate their findings in a way that preserved it for future generations in the original code.
So lets imagine some Human being of the far past say 100.000 ore more years ago conducting something we would call a scientific experiment these days, e.g. trying out different ways of coloring clay for body painting and later wall murals.
The "scienfific communication" in this case would have been based on oral/vocal/language which is thesed day is assumed to be well established in the human community at the time.
Oral Scientific Communication ~100.000 years ago
Written Scientific Communication ~5.500 years ago
Clay tablets have been used as the first durable, transportable and copyable means of communication of scientific findings.
Printed Scientific Communication ~1000 years ago
Some 5.000 years the written communication was improved only by modifying the writing medium to papirus and paper, improving the standardization of languages (greek/latin/chinese/ ...) and making the copying a manufacture art as was e.g. the case in christian monasteries. Printing was invented as a mechanized way of copying. Geoffrey Roper - Manuscripts and printing claims that printing was known many centuries befor Gutenberg's invention of the Printing Press
Letter of Grand Priest Luenna-AO 4238
An example clay tablet from the Louvre.
Links
References
- ^ Alan Kelly. (2020) "The History and Future of Scientific Publishing" - 10-33 pages. doi: 10.1093/oso/9780190936600.003.0002