Monks, wheels and secret flaps (pioneer mechanisms)

 

It is quite a marvelous thing to realize that the roots of interactive books lie in medieval Europe, where books were invented and where books were expensive, hand‑made, and decidedly not toys. Yet even in monasteries, some scribes could not resist the urge to make pages do something.

Volvelles

In 13th‑century scholarly works, notably the projects of Ramon Llull, circular “volvelles” appeared: stacked paper wheels attached to pages so that turning one ring aligned letters or concepts on another. The reader did not just read the argument; turning the wheel was part of doing the logic.

Astronomy and Astrology

In early astronomical and calendar books, volvelles allowed readers to calculate planetary positions or liturgical dates. Imagine a medieval student hunched over a manuscript, spinning a carefully cut disk to predict an eclipse; that rotating scrap of parchment is an ancestor of every pop‑up pirate ship.

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Military

Coding messages which describe military tactics needed encryption to get these from one army leader to the next without the chance for the enemy to intercept them.

 

Nautical

Although the example below is a whimsical, fictioned use of a volvelle in a nautical map, they were actually used from the 14th century to determine the position of the moon, latitude and longitude and as mathematical tools. They were however not integrated with maps like the fictional example below.

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Flaps

Medicine

Doctors quickly noticed that a flat diagram of the human body did not quite cut it. Anatomical books began to include “fugitive sheets” with layers of flaps: lift the chest wall and you see the lungs, lift again and the heart appears. It was grisly, brilliant, and deeply interactive: surgery practice for the squeamish, conducted entirely in paper.

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How do these wheels or volvelles work?

These early movable devices were all business: astronomy, theology, medicine. In terms of later typology, they sit in the “pioneer” category: the mechanisms are simple (wheels, layered flaps), but they introduce the core idea that the reader must manipulate the page to complete the content. No one would have called them “pop‑ups,” but they established the essential idea that a book could respond to the reader’s hands, not just to the reader’s eyes.

Some more examples of these volvelles and of how to make them work, can be found in The Elements of Pop-up by David A. Carter.

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Read and see more of the development of interactive and pop up books in my upcoming blogpost(s) and please subscribe to, follow and engage in my profiles on IG and Bluesky.