Before the advent of printing, breviaries were written by hand and were often richly decorated with initials and miniature illustrations telling stories in the lives of Christ or the saints, or stories from the Bible.

Before the advent of rock and roll, concept albums had their original heyday in jazz of the early to mid ' 50s with artists such as Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra, the latter of whom would record numerous concept albums for Capitol throughout the last half of the ' 50s such as In the Wee Small Hours, Come Fly with Me, Where Are You?

Before the advent of fast computing machines, solving a dynamical system required sophisticated mathematical techniques and could be accomplished only for a small class of dynamical systems.

Before the advent of government-funded public schools, the primary mode of education for those of the lower classes was the charity school, pioneered during the 19th century by Protestant organizations and adapted for use by the Roman Catholic Church and governmental bodies.

Before the advent of computer filter synthesis tools, graphical tools such as Bode plots and Nyquist plots were extensively used as design tools.

Before the advent of machine tools, metal was worked manually using the basic hand tools of hammers, files, scrapers, saws and chisels.

Before the advent of modern computers numerical methods often depended on hand interpolation in large printed tables.

Before the advent of copyright, anonymous and pseudonymous publication was a common practice in the sixteenth century publishing world, and a passage in the Arte of English Poesie ( 1589 ), the leading work of literary criticism of the Elizabethan period and an anonymously published work itself, mentions in passing that literary figures in the court who wrote " commendably well " circulated their poetry only among their friends, " as if it were a discredit for a gentleman to seem learned " ( Book 1, Chapter 8 ).

Before the advent of wax candles in the 14th century, this office was said in the dark or with minimal lighting ; and monks were expected to memorise everything.

Before the advent of direct-dialed long distance calls, a subscriber would need to contact the long-distance operator in order to place a toll call.

Before the advent of the pocket calculator, it was the most commonly used calculation tool in science and engineering.

Before the advent of the British, no empire based in mainland India had controlled any part of what now makes up the country's Northeast, part of the reason for the ongoing insurgency in Northeast India.

Before the advent of modern antibiotics, oil of thyme was used to medicate bandages.

Before the advent of the touchpad, small trackballs were common on portable computers, where there may be no desk space on which to run a mouse.

" Before the advent of Islam, the city was known as Yathrib but was personally renamed by Muhammad.

Before the advent of the CCD beam profiler, the beam width was estimated using the knife-edge technique: slice a laser beam with a razor and measure the power of the clipped beam as a function of the razor position.

Before the advent of DVD and Blu-ray, the Video CD ( abbreviated as VCD, and also known as View CD, Compact Disc digital video ) became the first format for distributing films on standard 120 mm optical discs.

Before the advent of artificial refrigeration, Madeira wine was particularly prized in areas where it was impractical to construct wine cellars ( as in parts of the southern United States ) because, unlike many other fine wines, it could survive being stored over hot summers without significant damage.

Before the advent of anesthesia, surgery was a traumatically painful procedure and surgeons were encouraged to be as swift as possible to minimize patient suffering.

Before the advent of VLSI devices, TTL integrated circuits were a standard method of construction for the processors of mini-computer and mainframe processors ; such as the DEC VAX and Data General Eclipse, and for equipment such as machine tool numerical controls, printers and video display terminals.

Before the advent of modern pipes, water was brought from an outdoor source such as wells, pumps or springs.

Before the advent of disk operating systems and the ability to record large data files, core dumps were paper printouts of the contents of memory, typically arranged in columns of octal or hexadecimal numbers ( a " hex dump "), sometimes accompanied by their interpretations as machine language instructions, text strings, or decimal or floating-point numbers ( cf.

Before the advent of the modern critical edition of historical Roman works, AUC was indiscriminately added to them by earlier editors, making it appear more widely used than it actually was.

Before the advent of the codex ( book ), Latin and Greek script was written on scrolls.

Before the advent of radio, carrier pigeons were frequently used on the battlefield as a means for a mobile force to communicate with a stationary headquarters.

Before this eventuated World Class were almost the sole performers in the club, managed by Alonzo who smooth-talked his way into obtaining a record deal from CBS Records for the group and was using money generated from sales to build an inexpensive four-track recording studio at the back of the club to cut records for his acts.

Before the advent of inexpensive dot-matrix displays, sixteen and fourteen-segment displays were some of the few options available for producing alphanumeric characters on calculators and other embedded systems.

Before the wide availability of inexpensive stainless steel cutlery they were used for cutting citrus fruit, tomatoes, and other acidic foods, the flavor of which would be tainted by steel knives and which would stain ordinary steel knives.

Before 1981, the specially heat treated stainless steel used was 440C, from 1981 to 1992 it was 425M, and after 1993 Buck has used 420HC stainless steel.

Before World War II, Poland's industrial base was concentrated in the coal, textile, chemical, machinery, iron, and steel sectors.

Before acquiring guns in the 18th century, Evenks used steel bows and arrows.

Before climbing a tributary up to Craigmont, the highway briefly paralleled a massive steel railroad trestle near its base, its track nearly 300 ( 91 m ) feet above the creek.

Before the steel bridge was built in 1900, all timber north of Zalma had to be transported to Lutesville, the only outlet to the railroad, for after the mill dam was built, the river could be forded in dry seasons only.

Before plastics were invented, steel vessels covered with a ceramic called enamelware were the norm in American homes.

Before it would ever produce any steel, financial issues arose and due to the Panic of 1893 the mill subsequently closed without ever producing any steel.

Before Dacron, Spectra and Kevlar were available, high performance box kites used oiled silk, linen or hemp sails, and were flown with steel cable.

Before the introduction of Huntsman's technique, Sheffield produced about 200 tonnes of steel per year based on Swedish wrought iron ( see Oregrounds iron ).

Before meeting Fry and Leela and joining Professor Farnsworth's delivery crew at Planet Express where Bender currently works as the assistant manager of sales, he had a job at the metalworking factory, bending steel girders for the construction of suicide booths.

Before studying chemistry, Bergius was sent to work for 6 months at the steel works in Mühlheim.

Before he became an actor he worked at the nearby Stanton & Staveley steel works.

Before the mid 19th century when cheap mild steel became available due to new methods of steelmaking, knives ( and other edged tools ) were made by welding a strip of steel on to the piece of iron that was to be formed into a knife, or sandwiching a strip of steel between two pieces of iron.

Before it was interrupted, the Third Five Year Plan produced no less than 19 million tons of steel and 150 million tons of coal.

Before the war, it had been argued within the army that the cuirass should be limited to parade dress but upon mobilisation in 1914 the only concession made to active service was the addition of a cover of brown or blue cloth over the shining steel and brass to make the wearer less visible.

Before the development of corrosion resistant surface treatments for steel, gun surfaces were engraved to retain more oil to prevent rust.

Before the introduction of the Elimination Chamber match, WWE only promoted two matches in a caged environment, the steel cage and Hell in a Cell matches.

Before the 19th century, almost all iron in Finland was made from limonite on charcoal blast furnaces, which yield very pure and high quality iron suitable for crucible steel.

Before 1989 a 190-metre high self-radiating, free standing steel framework tower was used as a transmission aerial.

Before an overflow crowd, John W. Davis argued for the steel companies that the President had no powers to make laws or, more particularly, to seize property without Congressional authorization.