incunabula
/ˌɪnkjʊˈnæbjələ/
noun
- Books printed before the year 1501; the earliest printed books, from the infancy of printing.
- Scholars study incunabula to understand the spread of printing in Europe.
- The university's collection of incunabula includes a rare Gutenberg Bible leaf.
- Many incunabula were printed without title pages, making them harder to identify.
- The earliest stages or first beginnings of something.
- Historians often look at ancient myths as the incunabula of religious thought.
- The first sketches can be seen as the incunabula of her famous painting style.
- Those early experiments were the incunabula of modern computer science.