When books lived in chains

Before the printing press, a book was an object of extreme luxury: copying one by hand could take months or years, and its parchment came from the skins of dozens of animals. Losing a single volume meant losing a fortune.

Many European libraries went for the literal solution: chaining their books. Each volume had a chain fixed to its cover and to a rod along the shelf — long enough to read it at the lectern, short enough that it could never leave the room.

The best-preserved example is in Hereford Cathedral, in England: hundreds of volumes still hang from their original chains today, shelved spine-inward so the chain wouldn't tangle when pulled out.

The chains only came off once printing made books so cheap that stealing them stopped being worth it. Trust arrived with the price tag.