Evolution Of Type By Andreas Scheiger

"When and to whom in the dim past the idea came that man’s speech could be better represented by fewer symbols (to denote certain unvarying sounds) selected fromthe confused mass of picture ideographs, phonograms, and their like, which constituted the first methods of representing human speech, we have no certain means of knowing. But whatever the source, the development did come; and we must deal with it. To present briefly the early history of the alphabet requires that much collateral matter must be disregarded and a great deal that is omitted here must necessarily be taken for granted; the writer desires, however, to present what seems to him to be a logical and probable story of the alphabet’s beginnings.”
Frederic W. Goudy, “The Alphabet and Elements of Lettering” (1918)