Paper
Knowledge becomes cheap to store and easy to carry
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Paper spread west after the Battle of Talas in 751, where Arab forces are said to have captured Chinese papermakers; Samarkand and later Baghdad acquired paper mills. The material was the precondition for the Abbasid book market, for the bureaucracies that ran large empires, and ultimately for Gutenberg's press — which would have been economically pointless on parchment, where a single Bible required the skins of some 250 sheep.
For children
In China, Cai Lun found that you could mash rags, bark and fishing nets in water and press the pulp into thin sheets. Paper was far cheaper than silk and lighter than clay tablets. It took 1,000 years for the recipe to reach Europe.
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Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org