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 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 the sale of hides, grain, honey, and wax to the Holy Roman Empire, Venice and Poland, and the import of silk, weapons and other manufactured goods from these areas had been widespread, but by the end of the 16th century the Ottoman Empire became the main market for Romanian products.

Before divesting them, the chemical giant owned consumer products Eveready and Energizer batteries, Glad bags and wraps, Simoniz car wax, and Prestone antifreeze.

Before rubber erasers, tablets of rubber or wax were used to erase lead or charcoal marks from paper.

( Before sealing wax, the Romans used bitumen for this purpose.

Before dying the cloth the pattern is been marked with wax.

Before the proliferation of electricity services, candles were brought into the bedroom using chambersticks, which were shorter than ordinary candleholders and furnished with a wide pan to catch the wax drippings.

Before he was buried Vianney was fitted with a wax mask.

Before him are seven tall white candles on a table, and, as they melt, his hopes of survival also diminish.

Before the invention of electric lighting, candles and oil lamps were commonly used for illumination.

Before lighting the candles the acolyte is supposed to bow at the altar.

Before the extinguishing of the last altar candles, the acolytes relight their " candle lighter " and then process out into the narthex.

Before the cake is eaten the person whose birthday it is should blow out the candles one after another .”

Before the invention of these safety lamps, miners used candles with open flames.

Before the 14th century, Khan Yunis was a village known as " Salqah.

Before the 14th century Nederweert was part of the municipality of Weert.

Before the 14th century, Boulogne was a small village called Menuls-lès-Saint-Cloud ( meaning " Menuls near Saint-Cloud ").

Before the opening of the 14th National Congress of the CPC in 1992, the Party's senior leaders, including Deng and Chen Yun, were to select candidates for the Politburo Standing Committee to ensure a smooth transition of power from the so-called second-generation leaders ( Deng, Chen, Li Xiannian, Wang Zhen, etc.

Before his joined the Air Service, Wolfram took leave in Germany until he reported to the 14th Flying Replacement Regiment based at Halle, one of several large flight schools.

Before the late 14th century, a fixed hand ( often a carving shaped like a hand ) indicated the hour by pointing to numbers on a rotating dial ; after this time the current convention of a rotating hand on a fixed dial was adopted.

Before the 14th century was over, Simmern passed to the Counts Palatine of the House of Wittelsbach.

Before the 14th Street – Eastern and Canarsie Lines were connected, the Canarsie part of the line already had a number, 14, running from lower Manhattan via the Broadway Elevated and called the Canarsie Line.

Before the 14th century, the star next to the crescent does not seem to have been associated with Islam, and appears in Christian iconography.

Before the redistricting, all of Akron had been part of the 14th District, represented by eight-term Democrat Tom Sawyer.

Before the first arrival of Europeans on Luzon island, the area where Intramuros lies was part of the Majapahit empire around the 14th century, according to the epic eulogy poem Nagarakretagama which described its conquest by Mahārāja Hayam Wuruk.

Before the Civil War, theatres in New York City were primarily located along Broadway and the Bowery up to 14th Street, with those on Broadway appealing more to the middle and upper classes and the Bowery theatres attracting immigrant audiences, clerks and the working class.

Before taking on his current assignment, Henican wrote Newsday's subway column, leading the paper to a Pulitzer Prize for covering the 14th Street – Union Square ( New York City Subway ) train wreck.

Before the 14th century, popular uprisings were not unknown ( e. g., uprisings at a manor house against an unpleasant overlord ), but they were local in scope.

Before the 14th century, oversight of the collection of royal taxes fell generally to the baillis and sénéchaux in their circumscriptions.