The Evolution of Forms: The Inception Era

The birth of forms, what a good place to start when exploring the different eras of forms! The birth of forms happened in what I am referring to as the Inception Era. This is where the first recorded form can be tracked back to and can you believe it was a business form!

There were two major technological requirements for forms to come into existence. The first one society needed to have written word and we needed somewhere to write our form. This takes us to Sumer in 2100 BC, where we can find one of the oldest example of a cuneiform tablet at Emory University in Atlanta Georgia and it is a record of a transaction – it is a requisition form!

Which makes sense, creating a record of anything at this point was clunky and time consuming so what was recorded needed to be of high value and money has always been very important so keeping track of that makes sense.

All though this was a great start, just like with all emerging technologies, there was still lots of room for improvements. Forms were being etched into clay tablets and baked to preserve them so they took a long time to create, were clunky, hard to circulate and were easily damaged. Still, this was a great first step and was a pivotal advancement not just for forms but for societies as a whole.