The origins of the alphabet

What I have learnt about the origins of the alphabet from -  'The Thames and Hudson Manual of Typography'- Ruari McLean.

The ability to write brought about the invention of the alphabet. In order to have become a typographer they needed to fully understand the alphabet and how it was different from other writing systems such as chinese or Japanese.
Although it is not certain where our alphabet originated from there is a wide belief that it was most likely to have been invented less than two years before Christ in an eastern corner of the Mediterranean.
David Diringer believes that all existing writing systems have stems and developed from this first invented type. He said "The inventor of inventors are to be ranged among the greatest benefactors of mankind...only the Syro-Palestinian Semites produced a genius who created the alphabetic writing from which have descended all past and present alphabets"
As soon as writing was invented people were trying to make it look better and better to make it aesthetically pleasing.
There was a tradition of decorated, illuminated and illustrated manuscripts that are very significant to typographers, countless books exist today on the topic. The British museum has a permanent collection of illuminated manuscripts.
Paper was invented in China and this knowledge of how to make paper spread slowly from the East towards the West. The first paper mill in Europe was established in Spain in AD 1150.
Printing from wooden blocks also flourished in China. It had become an art by the tenth century AD.
The 'Diamond Sutra' which is also in the British museum dated back to 868 and has been named as the worlds oldest extant printed book.
Then came the invention of printing from moveable type made out of clay and held in an iron forme. In Pi Sheng China between 1041 and 1048 and also in korea they used moveable metal type  but since the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans did not have an alphabet the invention of moveable type was not a big deal then.
T.F. Carter said "The writing of the languages of the far east is based on some forty thousand separate symbols: for them, until the large wholesale printing of recent years, moveable type have seldom been practical or economical...The invention of printing from wooden blocks was therefore the invention of printing in china"
Nobody knows whether the process of Block printing in the form of playing cards, money or books spread to Europe before the process began there. We do not know when block printing first began in Europe but there is evidence that it was used for printing textiles from at least the sixth Century and we do know that playing cards were popular in France in the late fourteenth century.
However the wooden block printing process used for pictures and text did not lead to the invention of moveable type in Europe.
The invention of moveable type by Johannes Gutenberg was down to his knowledge of metal as a goldsmith. His invention was made after around ten years of trial and error to bring about the popular printing process that opened the door to lots more different typefaces emerging.