People became literate with the help of the alphabet and the printing press. One was a standard, the other was a process of dissemination. For the case of learning through text, alphabets and languages provide syntax and rules for the ways characters combine to map to ideas in the same way that more advanced systems of picture writing synthesized simple ideograms to facilitate transmission of more complex ideas. 


Although intellectuals in $13^{th}$ century Europe had read Aristotle, Euclid, Ptolemy, Cicero, Galen, Hippocrates, it wasn't until the Protestant Reformation that was led by Martin Luther, when his translation of the New Testament when written in the vernacular in 1529. Books contained alphabet and syllable tables in the vernacular by the late $16^{th}$ century, with intention of enabling children to learn \cite[41]{literacy}.


The first press was established in the the mid-$17^{th}$ century in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and textbooks were published within the original Colonies. The American textbook today is a product of the later half of the $19^{th}$ century when the school was a profitable market and the transportation infrastructure allowed it \cite[41]{literacy}. The authorship of textbooks became more important over time as school and literacy popularized, and more children and people were learning, which further increased the amount of educated people in the population \cite[9]{literacy}.

Evolution of Text and Literacy