TYPOGRAPHY (writing by types) is the art of printing (cast-metal) movable types on paper, vellum, &c. It is quite distinct, not only from writing, but from xylography or wood-engraving, i.e ., the art of cutting figures, letters, or words on blocks of wood and taking impressions from such blocks, by means of ink or any other fluid coloured substance, on paper or vellum.
Possibly the earliest attempt to describe the art of typography is that in the Donatus issued by Peter Schoeffer, perhaps before 1456, the colophon of which says that it was finished “Arte nova imprimendi seu caracterizandi [from character = letter] . . . absque calami exaratione.” Fust and Schoeffer in the Mainz psalter of 1457 said that it was formed by an “adinventio artificiosa imprimendi ac caracterizandi absque calami ulla exaratione.” The colophon of the Catholicon of 1460 is more precise, and says that the book was printed “non calami, stili, aut pennae suffragio, sed mira patronarum formarumque concordia, proportione, ac modulo.” In 1462 Albrecht Pfister had “gedrucket” the Four Histories. In the Liber Sextus Decretalium, published in 1465, Fust and Schoeffer say that it was completed “non atramento [“atramento communi,” in the Justinianus of 1468 and 1472], plumali canna neque aerea, sed artificiosa quadam adinventione imprimendi seu caracterizandi,” a phrase which they slightly varied in Cicero’s Officia, issued in the same year: “non atramento, plumali canna neque aerea, sed arte quadam perpulcra.” The edition of St. Jerome’s Epistles of 1470 is said to have been completed by an “ars impressoria,” the Decretum Gratiani of 1472 by an “ars quaedam ingeniosa imprimendi,” the Dyalogus of 1478 by an “ars magistra.” We find further—“ars sancta” or “divina,” “nova ars scribendi,” “novum exscribendi genus prope divinum,” “sculptoria archetyporum ars,” “ars mirifica formandi,” “ars excusoria,” “nova imprimendi ratio,” “ars pressurae,” “chalcotypa ars,” “chalcographia” (1472 and later), “chalcographia excusoria impressoriaque,” “libraria impressio,” “empryntynge” (Caxton, 1482), “prenterei” (Schoeffer, 1492), “truckery” (1505), “impression des livres” (1498), and “prenten.”
The early printers called themselves, or were called by others, “libronim prothocaragmatici” (Gramm. Rhythm., 1468), “impres-sores libronim,” “exsculptor libronim” (Jenson, 1471), “chal-cographus” (1473; Hain, 13036), “magister artis impressoria?,” “boeckprinter”; and during the 16th century we find them still frequently called “chalcotypus” and “chalcographus.”
The types were at first designated more by negative than positive expressions. In 1468 they were called “caragma,” later on “car-acter" or “character,” “archetipae notae” (1473; Hain, 13036), “sculptoria archetyporum ars,” “chalcotypa ars,” “formae,” “ar-tificiosissimae imprimendorum librorum formae.” We soon hear also of the process and material by which they were produced. The Grammatica of 1468, published by Schoeffer, says that it was “cast” (sum fusus libellus). In 1471 “aeneae formulae” are spoken of; and Bernardus Cenninus and his son say that they had printed the Virgil “expressis ante calibe caracteribus et deinde fusis literis” (with letters first cut into steel and then cast). In 1473 Friedrich Creusner at Nuremberg says that he had “cut” (sculpsit) the work of Diogenes (Hain, 6192). Johan Zeiner of Ulm says in 1474 that he had perfected a book, not with the pen, but with letters of metal (stagneis caracteribus). In 1474 Joh. Ph. de Lignamine speaks of “metallicae formae.” In 1476 Husner of Strasburg represents the Nider as being printed with “letters cut of metal (litteris sculptis artificiali certe conatu ex aere).” Nicolas Jenson printed in 1480 with letters “cut and cast” (sculptis ac conflatis).
The word typographus does not seem to occur before 1488, when it was used in the preface of P. Stephanus Dulcinius Scalae to the Astronomicon of Manilius, printed in that year at Milan by Antonius Zarotus, in 1498 Erasmus uses it in a letter (dated 13th Feb.) to Christianus, a Lübeck merchant; and in 1517 Johan Schoeffer applies the word to himself in the colophon of the Aeneas Sylvius published by him. But of the use of the word typographia no earlier instance is known than 1520, in which year Gerardus Noviomagus (=Geldenhaurius) in his Lucubratiuncula de Batavorum Insula (pref. to Nicol. Buscoducensis, dated 1520) says: “inventa Germanorum . . . bombarda videlicet, typographia, pyxis char-taque nautica;” and Johan Schott, a printer of Strasburg, in the Geogr. Ptolem. published by him, describes his grandfather, Johan Mentelin, as “primus typographiae inventor.” Gerardus, it may be added, borrowed the whole passage from Pet. Montanus (li. 1 Adam, published a. 1504), who has chalcographia instead of typo graphia. Meerman indeed speaks of a use of the word typographia (or at least of typographus) earlier than 1520, and refers to the preface of Bernardinus Veronensis in the edition of Tibullus, Catullus, and Propertius published at Venice in 1493 by Symon Bevilaqua, “at least,” Meerman adds, “as it (the preface) is read in the Annal. Typogr. of Maittaire, i. 560, 2d ed.” But on page 560 Maittaire quotes the first two lines of Bernardinus’s preface (till dicit) and then adds: “Gratis characteribus destitutus, typographus necesse habuit hiatus in commentario hic illic relinquere,” which is evidently Maittaire’s own remark, not that of Bernardinus. The present writer at least has been unable to find such a passage in the Tibullus.
Although the art of writing and that of block-printing both differ widely from printing with movable metal types, yet this last process seems to have been such a gradual transition from block-printing, and block-printing in its turn to have been such a natural outcome of the many trials that were probably made to produce books in some more expeditious manner than could be done with handwriting, that a cursory glance at these two processes will not seem out of place, all the less as a discussion on the origin and progress of typography could hardly be understood without knowing the state of the literary development at the time that printing appeared.
The art of printing, i.e., of impressing (by means of certain forms and colours) figures, pictures, letters, words, lines, whole pages, &c., on other objects, as also the art of engraving, which is inseparably connected with printing, existed long before the 15th century. Not to go back to remoter essays, there is reason to suppose that mediaeval kings and princes (among others William the Conqueror) had their monograms cut on blocks of wood or metal in order to impress them on their charters. Such impressions from stamps are found instead of seals on charters of the 15th century. Manuscripts of the 12th century show initials which, on account of their uniformity, are believed to have been impressed by means of stamps or dies. But the idea of multiplying representations from one engraved plate or block or other form was unknown to the ancients, whereas it is predominant in what we call the art of blockprinting, and especially in that of typography, in which the same types can be used again and again.
Block-printing and printing with movable types seem to have been practised in China and Japan long before they were known in Europe. It is said that in the year 175 the text of the Chinese classics was cut upon tablets, which were erected outside the university, and that impressions were taken of them, some of which are said to be still in existence. Printing from wooden blocks can be traced as far back as the 6th century, when the founder of the Suy dynasty is said to have had the remains of the classical books engraved on wood, though it was not until the 10th century that printed books became common. In Japan the earliest example of block-printing dates from the period 764-770, when the empress Shiyau-toku, in pursuance of a vow, had a million small wooden toy pagodas made for distribution among the Buddhist temples and monasteries, each of which was to contain a dhâranî out of the Buddhist Scriptures entitled “Vimala nirbhasa Sûtra,” printed on a slip of paper about 18 inches in length and 2 in width, which was rolled up and deposited in the body of the pagoda under the spire. In a journal of the period, under the year 987, the expression “printed” book” (suri-hoñ) is found applied to a copy of the Buddhist canon brought back from China by a Buddhist priest. This, of course, must have been a Chinese edition; but the use of the term implies that printed books were already known in Japan. It is said that the Chinese printed with movable types (of clay) from the middle of the 11th century. The authorities of the British Museum exhibit as the earliest instance of Corean books printed with movable types a work printed in 1337. To the Coreans is attributed the invention of copper types in the beginning of the 15th century; and an inspection of books bearing dates of that period seems to show that they used such types, even if they did not invent them.
From such evidence as we have it would seem that Europe is not indebted to the Chinese or Japanese for the art of block-printing, nor for that of printing with movable types.
In Europe, as late as the second half of the 14th century, every book (including school and prayer books), and every public and private document, proclamation, bull, letter, &c., was written by hand; all figures and pictures, even playing-cards and images of saints, were drawn with the pen or painted with a brush. In the 13th century there already existed a kind of book trade. The organization of universities as well as that of large ecclesiastical establishments was at that time incomplete, especially in Italy, France, and Germany, without a staff of scribes and transcribers {scriptores), illuminators, lenders, sellers, and custodians of books {stationary librorum, librarii), and per-gamenarii, i.e., persons who prepared and sold the vellum or parchment required for books and documents. The books supplied were for the most part legal, theological, and educational, and are calculated to have amounted to above one hundred different works. As no book or document was approved unless it had some ornamented and illuminated initials or capital letters, there was no want of illuminators. The workmen scribes and transcribers were, perhaps without exception, caligraphers, and the illuminators for the most part artists. Beautifully written and richly illuminated manuscripts on vellum became objects of luxury which were eagerly bought and treasured up by princes and people of distinction. Burgundy of the 15th century, with its rich literature, its wealthy towns, its love for art, and its school of painting, was in this respect the centre of Europe, and the libraries of its dukes at Brussels, Bruges, Antwerp, Ghent, &c., contained more than three thousand beautifully illuminated MSS.
In speaking of the writing of the manuscripts of the 15th and two preceding centuries, it is essential to distinguish, in each country, between at least four different classes of writing, and two of these must be again subdivided each into two classes. All these different kinds of writing were, in the first instance, taken as models for cutting such portions of text as were intended to illustrate and explain the figures in block-books, and afterwards as models for the types used in the printing of books and documents.
(1) The book hand, that is, the ordinary writing of legal, theological, and devotional books, was used by the official transcribers of the universities and churches. These men had received a more or less learned education, and consequently wrote or transcribed books with a certain pretence of understanding them and of being able to write with greater rapidity than the ordinary caligrapher. Hence their writing may be called (a ) the current or cursive book hand, of which a good many illustrations may be found in Wilh. Schum, Exempla Codicum Amplon. Erfurtensium. Quite distinct from this current writing, and much clearer and more distinct, is (b) the upright or set book hand, which was employed by some writers who worked for universities and churches, and also by a good many who may be presumed to have worked in large cities and Commercial towns for schools and the people in general without university connexion. (2) In the church hand (Gothic or black letter) were produced transcripts of the Bible, missals, psalters, and other works intended for use in churches and private places of worship. This writing we may again subdivide into two classes,—(a ) the ornamental or caligraphic writing, found exclusively in books intended for use in churches or for the private use of wealthy and distinguished persons, and (b ) the ordinary upright or set church hand, employed for less ornamental and less expensive books. (3) The letter hand may be said to be intermediate between the set literary book hand and the set literary church hand, and to differ but little from either. It was employed in all public documents of the nature of a letter. (4) The court or charter hand was used for charters, title-deeds, papal bulls, &c.
Dypold Läber (Lauber), a teacher and transcriber at Hagenau in Germany, is known to have carried on a busy trade in manuscripts just about the time of the invention of printing. His prospectuses, in handwriting of about the middle of the 15th century, announce that whatever books people wish to have, large or small, “geistlich oder weltlich, hübsch gemolt,” are all to be found at Dypold Lauber’s the scribe. He had in stock Gesta Romanorum, mit den Viguren gemolt ; poetical works (Partirai, Tristan, Freidank) ; romances of chivalry Der Witfarn Ritter; Von eime Getruwen Ritter der sin eigen Hertze gab umb einer schonen Frowen willen; Der Ritter unter dem Zuber) ; Biblical and legendary works (A Rimed Bible; A Psalter, Latin and German; Episteln und Evangelien durch das Jor; Vita Christy; Das gantze Passional, winterteil und summerteil; devotional books (Bellial; Der Selen Trost; Der Rosenkrantz; Die zehn Gebot mit Glosen; Small Bette-Bücher) ; and books for the people (Gute bewehrte Artznien-Bücher; Gemolte Loss-Bücher, ce., fortune-telling books; Schachtzabel gemolt). The lower educational books consisted for the most part of the Abecedaria, containing the alphabet, the Lord’s prayer, the creed, and one or two prayers; the Donatus, a short Latin grammar extracted from the work of Aelius Donatus, a Roman grammarian of the 4th century, and distinctly mentioned in a school ordinance of Bautzen of 1418; the Doctrinale, a Latin grammar in leonine verse, compiled by Alexander Gallus (or De Villa Dei), a minorite of Brittany of the 13th century; the Summula Logica of Petrus Hispanus (afterwards Pope John XXI.), used in the teaching of logic and dialectics; and Dionysius Cato's Disticha de Moribus, and its supplement called Facetus, with the Floretus of St Bernard, used in the teaching of morals. As helps to the clergy in their attempts to educate the lower classes, and as a means of assisting and promoting private devotion, there were picture books accompanied with an easy explanatory text, for the most part representations of the mystic relation between the Old and New Testaments (typology). Among these books the Biblia Pauperum stands first. It represents pictorially the life and passion of Christ, and there exist MSS. of it as early as the 13th century, in some cases beautifully illuminated. A richly illuminated MS. of it, executed in the Netherlands c . 1400, is in the British Museum (press-mark, King’s, 5), and also fragments of one of the 14th century (press-mark, 31,303). A remodelling and development of this work is the Speculum Humanae Salvationis, a work in rhyme of the 14th century, which in forty-five chapters represents the Bible history interwoven with Mariolatry and legend. Of this work the Paris national library and arsenal library each possesses a MS. composed in 1324, whereas the British Museum has nine MSS. (six being illuminated) of the 14th and 15th centuries, written in the Netherlands, Germany, France, and England, one (press-mark, 16,578) bearing the distinct date 1379 and. another (press-mark, Egerton, 878) that of 1436. A work of a similar nature is the Apocalypsis, of which at least two recensions with illustrations may be pointed out. One gives the text as we know it, with or without commentary, for which cf. Brit. Mus., 17,333 (French), 18,633 (French, but written in England), Reg. 2 D. xiii., and 22,493 (French),—all four early 14th century. Another is more a short history or biography of St John, but the illustrations follow those of the former work very closely; cf. Brit. Mus., 19,896 (15th century, German). It is this last recension which agrees with the blockbook to be mentioned hereafter. Other devotional works are the Ars Moriendi, the Antichrist, and other works which will be found mentioned among the block-books.
Block-Printing or Xylography.
When all this writing, transcribing, illuminating, Ac., had reached their period of greatest development, the art of printing from wooden blocks (block-printing, xylography) on silk, cloth, &c., vellum, and paper made its appearance in Europe. It seems to have been practised, so far as we have evidence, on cloth, &c., and vellum as early as the 12th century, and on paper as far back as the second half of the 14th century, while it was largely employed in the early part of the 15th in the production of (1) separate leaves (called briefs, from breve, scriptum), containing either a picture (print, prent, shortened from the Fr. emprunt, empreinte, and already used by Chaucer, C. T., 6186, six-text, D. 604, printe, prente, preente, and in other early English documents; also called in colloquial German Helge, Helglein, or Halae) or a piece of text, or both together: and of (2) whole block-books, sometimes consisting of half picture and half text, or wholly of text, or altogether of picture. It is, however, certain that about 1400 xylography was known all over Germany, Flanders, and Holland.
In these blocks, as in wood-engraving now, the lines to be printed were in relief. The block, after the picture or the text had been engraved upon it, was first thoroughly wetted with a thin, watery, pale brown material, much resembling distemper; then a sheet of damp paper was laid upon it, and the back of the paper was carefully rubbed with some kind of dabber or burnisher, usually called a frotton, till an impression from the ridges of the carved block had been transferred to the paper. In this fashion a sheet could only be printed on one side (anopisthographic); and in some copies of block-books we find the sides on which there is no printing pasted together so as to give the work the appearance of an ordinary book. There are only a few block-books which do not possess this characteristic, as the Legend of St Servatius in the royal library of Brussels, Das Zeitglöcklein in the Bamberg library (cf . Falkenstein, p. 49), Das geistlich und weltlich Rom at Althorp and Gotha (cf. Falkenstein, p. 46); but these belong to the end of the 15th century, and therefore to a later period than the ordinary block-books. Consequently, if a man wanted to set up as a printer of briefs or books, he needed no apparatus but a set of wood-blocks and a rubber.
Formerly it was the general opinion that playing-cards had been the first products of xylography; but the earliest that have been preserved to us are done by hand, while the printed ones date from the 15th century, therefore from a period in which woodcuts were already used for other purposes. It is believed that some of the wood engravings and block-books were printed in monasteries. In a necrology of the Franciscan monastery at Nordlingen, which comes down to the beginning of the 15th century, this entry occurs: “VII. Id. Augusti, obiit Frater h. Luger, laycus, optimus incisor lignorum”; and on some of the engravings we find the arms of certain monasteries, which may, however, merely mean that they were printed for, not in, those monasteries. The registers of Ulin mention several wood-engravers (formschneider),— in 1398 a certain Ulrich; in 1441 Heinrich Peter von Erolzheim, Joerg, and another Heinrich; in 1442 Ulrich and Lienhart; in 1447 Claus (Nicolas), Stoffel (Christopher), and Johann; in 1455 Wilhelm; in 1461 Meister Ulrich, &c. In a register of taxes of Nordlingen we find from 1428 to 1452 a certain Wilhelm Kegeler mentioned as brief-trücker ; in 1453 his widow is called alt brieftriivkerin ; and in 1461 his brother Wilhelm is registered for the same craft. At Mainz there was a printer, Henne Cruse, in 1440. At Nuremberg we find in 1449 Hans, a formschneider, while his son Junghans exercised the same industry from 1472 to 1490. Hans von Pfedersheim printed at Frankfort in 1459, and Peter Schott at Strasburg in 1464. A certain George Glockendon exercised the same trade at Nuremberg till 1474, when he died, being succeeded by a son and afterwards by a grandson. In Flanders a Jan de Printere was established at Antwerp in 1417; and printers and wood engravers (houte bild-snyters) worked there in 1442 (Privileges of the Corporation of St Luke at Antwerp). At Bruges printers and beeldemakers (makers, engravers of images) were enumerated in 1454 among the members of the fraternity of St John the Evangelist. The printers of playing cards seem to have constituted a separate class. These entries show that about the middle of the 15th century there were men who exercised the art of wood-engraving and printing as a trade or craft. It seems also certain that wealthy persons and religious institutions were wont to possess sets of blocks, and, when occasion arose, they printed a set of sheets for presentation to a friend, or in the case of monasteries for sale to the passing pilgrim. A printer of briefs or block-books had no need to serve an apprenticeship; any neat-handed man could print for himself. We learn from the inventory of the possessions of Jean de Hinsberg, bishop of Liége (1419-1455), and his sister, a nun in the convent of Bethany, near Mechlin, that they possessed “unum instrumentum ad imprimendas scripturas et ymagines,” and “novem printe lignee ad imprimendas ymagines cum quatuordecim aliis lapideis printis.” These entries would seem to indicate that people purchased engraved blocks of wood or of stone from the woodcutter rather than books from a printer.
The earliest dated woodcut that we know of is the St Christopher of 1423, preserved in the library of Lord Spencer at Althorp. The Mary engraving, which is preserved at Brussels and apparently bears the date mccccxviii., is now declared to be of 1468, the date having been falsified. The next date after that of the St Christopher is 1437, found on a woodcut preserved in the imperial library at Vienna. It was discovered in 1779 in the monastery of St Blaise in the Black Forest, and represents the martyrdom of St Sebastian, with fourteen lines of text. The date, however, is said by others to refer to a concession of indulgences. A woodcut, preserved in the library at Vienna, which represents St Nicolas de Tolentino, has the date 1440, but written in by hand; as the saint was canonized in that year, it may refer to that event. Another in the Weigel collection representing the bearing of the cross, St Dorothea and St Alexis, has the date 1443, also written in by hand, though the woodcut is considered to belong to that period. These are the only known wood-engravings with dates anterior to the second half of the 15th century. But there exist a good many woodcuts which, from the style of the engraving, are presumed to be of an earlier date, and to have been printed partly in the fourteenth and partly in the first half of the 15th century. J. D. Passavant enumerates twenty-seven, all of German origin and preserved in various libraries in Germany, while in the Collectio Weigeliana (vol. i. ) no fewer than 154 are recorded, some of which are to be ascribed to the Netherlands. We know of the existence of at least five engravings which may be ascribed to the Netherlands :—(1) representing the Virgin Mary, with Dutch inscriptions, in the museum at Berlin; (2) representing the Virgin Mary spoken of above, in the library at Brussels; (3) representing St Anthony and St Sebastian, in the Weigel collection; (4) a St Hubert and St Eustatius, in the royal library at Brussels; (5) representing the Child Jesus, in the library at Berlin; (6) the Mass of St Gregory, with indulgence, in the Weigel collection (ef. i. 195).
Of block-books of probable German origin the following are known :—
(1) The Apocalypsis, or Historia S. Johannis Evangelistae ejusque Visiones Apocalypticae (Germ. Das Buch der haymlichen Offenbarungen Sanct Johans). Of this work six or seven editions are said to exist, each containing forty-eight (the 2d and 3d edition fifty) illustrations, on as many anopisthographic leaves, which seem to have been divided into three quires of eight sheets each. The first edition alone is without signatures.
(2) Ars Moriendi. Of this work some authors think that there are early German editions, among others that spoken of below as the 2d Dutch edition. Certainly German is the edition of Hans Sporer of Nuremberg, 1473, in the public library at Zwickau, of another by Ludwig zu Ulm, in the Paris national library, and of that described in Collectio Weigel. (ii. 16), where also other, but opisthographic, editions are described.
(3) Ars Memorandi ; thirty leaves, folio, printed on one side, fifteen leaves being letter-press and fifteen plates.
(4) Salve Regina, bears the name of its engraver, Lienhart czu Regenspurck. It is composed of sixteen leaves; two leaves (signature a) are wanting in the only copy known of it, which was in the Weigel collection (ii. 103).
(5) Vita Christi ; thirty-two leaves, sm. 8vo. Two copies in the Paris library (Sotheby, ii. 143).
(6) The Ten Commandments for Unlearned People (Die zehn Bott fur die ungelernte Leut). Ten leaves are preserved in the library at Heidelberg bound up with a manuscript (No. 438).
(7) The Passion of Our Lord; sixteen leaves, in the Weigel collection (Sotheby, ii. 141).
(8) The Antichrist (Der Enndchrist) ; twenty-six leaves, small folio (Sotheby, ii. 38; Weigel, ii. 111). Copies, Lord Spencer and coll. Weig.
(9) The Fifteen Signs of the Last Judgment ; twelve engravings, usually bound up with the engravings of The Antichrist (Sotheby, ii. 42). Copy, Lord Spencer. There is also an edition published at Nuremberg in 1472 by Junghannss Priffmaler.
(10) Symbolum Apostolicum ; small quarto, seven leaves printed on one side only, and containing twelve woodcuts with German inscriptions. The only copy of it known is preserved in the library of Munich (Sotheby, ii. 148).
(11) The Legend of St Meinrad ; forty-eight leaves. The only copy known is preserved in the Munich library (Sotheby, ii. 150).
(12) The Acht Schalkheiten, of which eight leaves were in the Weigel collection (i. 112; Sotheby, ii. 154).
(13) The Fable of the Sick Lion ; twelve leaves, preserved in the library at Heidelberg (No. 438; see Sotheby, ii. 159, pl. lxxxvi.).
(14) Defensorium Inviolatae Virginitatis b. Mariae Virginis ; sixteen leaves fol. The unique copy is in the British Museum. On the first leaf are the initials of the printer F[riedrich] W[altheren] and the date 1470 (Sotheby, ii. p. 63).
(15) The same work, twenty-seven leaves, large folio, with the imprint “Johannes eysenhüt impressor Anno ab incarnacōis dñice M o quadringentesimo septuagesimo j°” (cf Sotheby, ii. 72). Copy in the British Museum.
(16) The Dance of Death (Dance Macabre; Der Boten Dantz); twenty-seven leaves (Sotheby, ii. 156).
(17) Die Kunst Ciromantia of Dr Johan Hartlieb (Sotheby, ii. 84).
(18) Der Beichtspiegel or Confessionale ; eight engravings (Sotheby, ii. 145). Copy in the royal library at The Hague.
(19) The Apostles’ Creed; seven leaves, folio. Copy at Wolfenbüttel.
(20) The Credo, in German; twelve leaves, quarto. Copy in the royal library at Munich.
Propugnacula, seu Turris Sapientiae; one sheet, plano, Brit. Mus. (Sotheby, ii. 164).
Block-books of Netherlandish origin are :—
(1) Biblia Pauperum ; forty leaves (each bearing a signature; a to v, ∙a∙ to ∙v∙)∙ As many as seven editions have been distinguished by Sotheby (i. 43; see also Holtrop, Monum. Typ., p. 3).
(2) Ars Moriendi; twenty-four leaves, small folio, thirteen containing text, eleven plates (see Sotheby, i. 69; Holtrop, p. 8).
(3) Canticum Canticorum, Historia seu Providentia B. Virginis Mariae ex Cantico Canticorum ; sixteen leaves, in fol. (Sotheby, i. 77; Holtrop, p. 6).
(4) Liber Regum, seu Historia Davidis ; twenty leaves, folio (Sotheby, i. 120b). Some consider this to be a German work.
(5) Exercitium super Pater Noster, by Henricus de Pomerio; ten leaves, small folio (Sotheby, ii. 137; Holtrop, p. 10).
(6) Temptationes Demonis Temptantis Hominem de Septem Peccatis Mortalibus ; a single large folio leaf printed on one side. Two copies, one in British Museum, the other in the library at Wolfenbüttel.
(7) Vita Christi, or the Life and Passion of Christ ; thirty-six cuts, originally printed in a press on six anopisthographic leaves, 8vo. In the library at Erlangen (see Campbell, Annales, 746).
(8) Historia Sanctae Crucis ; a fragment of one leaf (with signature g ), preserved in the Weigel collection (ii. 92), which seems to be a proof-sheet only.
(9) Alphabet in figures (Holtrop, p. 11; Sotheby, i. 122).
(10) Pomerium Spirituale, by Henricus de Pomerio or Henry Bogaert; twelve leaves, having twelve woodcuts accompanied by MS. text, in the library at Brussels (Holtrop, Mon. Typ., p. 9). It bears the date 1440 in two places; but some contend that this refers to the date when the book was written, not when the engravings were printed.
Besides the works of Sotheby, Holtrop, and Weigel, already quoted, consult W. Μ. Conway, The Woodcutters of the Netherlands in the 15th Century, Cambridge, 1884; Heineken, Idée Générale, Leipsic, 1771; J. Ph. Berjeau, Facsimiles of the Biblia Pauperum, Canticum Canticorum, Speculum, London, 1859-1861; and Id., Catal. Illustré des Livres Xylogr., London, 1865.
Early Printing at Mainz.
When we, for the moment, leave out of sight the question as to when, where, and by whom the art of printing with movable metal types was invented, and take our stand on well-authenticated dates in such printed documents as have been preserved to us, we find that the first printed date, 1454, occurs in two different editions of the same letters of indulgence issued in that year by Pope Nicholas V. in behalf of the kingdom of Cyprus.
These two editions are distinguished respectively as the 31-line and the 30-line indulgence. The former, of which three different issues with the printed date mccccliiii., and a fourth with the printed date mcccclv., are known to exist, claims priority from a chronological point of view over the latter, of which one issue with the printed date mccccliiii., and two issues with the printed date mcccclquinto, are known to exist, because one of the sold copies that has been preserved was issued at Erfurt on 15th November 1454, whereas of the 30-line indulgence the earliest sold copy that has as yet come down to us was issued at Cologne on 27 th February 1455, though it distinctly has the printed date mccccliiii., but altered with the pen to mccccliiiij. In the 31-line indulgence occur (1) a large church type usually regarded as identical with that of the 36-line Bible, and used for the rubrics of the absolutions, for the word with which the document commences, and for the Christian name of the pope’s legate; (2) a smaller text or brief type, which was afterwards very closely imitated, if not actually used, at Eltville, in printing the 1472 edition of the Vocαbulαrius ex quo and an edition of the Summa de Articulis Fidei of Thomas Aquinas; (3) a large initial V and two large initials M, which differ from each other. In the 30-line indulgence occur (1) a large church type, which is used as in the 31-line indulgence, and is usually regarded as identical with that of the 42-line Bible; (2) a smaller text or brief type, of which as yet no further trace has been found; (3) a large initial U, and two large initials M, which differ from each other, the first being identical with the initial M of the second absolution of a 33-line indulgence printed by Peter Schoeffer in 1489 for “Raymundus Peyraudi, archidiaconus Alnisiensis in ecclesia Xanton,” who issued it at the order of Pope Innocent VIII., “pro tuicione orthodoxe fidei contra Turchos.” These two different editions are usually regarded as having been printed at Mainz; and, so long as there is no evidence to the contrary, we may assume that such was really the fact. But we must at the same time conclude that about November 1454 there were at least two rival printers at work there,—(1) the printer of the 31-line indulgence, whose name has not yet transpired, but who may have been Johan Gutenberg, perhaps subsidized by Johan Fust; (2) the printer of the 30-line indulgence, who was no doubt Peter (Schoeffer) de Gernss-heym, on account of the connexion of this indulgence with that of 1489, which was unquestionably printed by him. Latterly four written copies of the same indulgence have been found, which respectively bear the dates,—Frankfort, 10th April 1454 (in the possession of Herr Lais, Wiesbaden); Frankfort, 11th April 1454 (Frankfort archives); 11th July 1454 (place unknown; Darmstadt archives); Lübeck, 6th October 1454. As their dates precede by a few weeks only the earliest known printed date (15th November 1454), they mark, perhaps, the exact time when printing made its appearance at Mainz in an already advanced state of perfection.
In following up the basis afforded by the above indulgences we may give a short chronological view of the early printing at Mainz, so far as it is at present known, referring for minute details to J. H. Hessels, Gutenberg: Was he the Inventor of Printing? 1882, p. 150 sq. Types 1 (large church type) and 2 Lord Spencer’s library, in the Brit.
(smaller brief type), used by an un-Mus., at Jena, Leipsic, Antwerp, known printer, 1454. &C.
(i.) 31-line indulgence; three different Types 3 (large church type) and 4 issues (A, B,C), with the printed (smaller brief type), used by Peter year mccccliiii., and one issue (D) Schoeffer de Gernssheym. 1454-1455. one issue (A)
with the printed year mccccliiii., and B no sold copies have yet come to light, Three unsold copies of All each are preserved at (1) Bruns-printed year mcccclqumtθ. All printed on vellum. Of issue A
. A·i ∖r 1 has been discovered,
Hanover (Culemann). Of issue C now in Lord Spencer’s library. It eight sold copies are known to exist ,. t A olotme on p √ b 2 T
⅛⅛ lte ⅛ T∙ 1 ± t B e tTâ withdat s^from Mar te, ∙ 1 1455 m^nr 8 sold co P ie8 > '' ith dates Apr. 11 and with dates from Mar. <1455 to Apr. on iλa∏ u. ft known and f ° ur u " used c ° p ' es ale and the Brit. Mus. Of issue C two sold coι>ies, with dates Feb.
Type 1, continued ; for type 2 2 J* and Apr. 24 1455, are at Hanover see below * (Culemann) and Wolfenbüttel. An
(ii.) Manung Widder die Birke. An al- c0 ^ is at Hauover < Cule *
manac for Jan. 1455, in 4to, 5 ' - leaves, 20 and 21 uneven lines. Type 3, continued (till about 1457);
The only copy known was dis-of type 4 no further trace is found, covered at Augsburg, and is now (jj.) Donatus of 24, 25, or 26 lines, 24 in the Munich library. (?) leaves; one leaf (the 8th or
(in.) Conjunctiones et oppositiones Solis Sth?) in the Mainz library.
et Lun«. A calendar for 1457, (iü.) Donatus of 32 lines, 14 (?) leaves, a broadside sheet, printed on one the 10th (?) in the Mainz library.
side. The upper half of the only ({ v .) Donatus of 33 lines, two leaves copy known was discovered at ⅛ the Paris library.
Mainz, and is now in the Paris ( v .) Donatus of 35 lines, folio; printed, library. according to the colophon, “per
(ιv.) Der Cisianus (not Cisianus) zu Petrum de Gernssheym, in urbe Dutsche. A broadside sheet, printed Moguntina cum suis capitalibus.” on one side, 36 lines, besides (vi.) 42-line Bible (also called Mazarine separate head-line. The Tross Bible), printed before Aug. 15
copy, mentioned in Suppl. to 1456, as the binder of the paper
Brunet’s Manuel (1878, s.v. “Cis-copy in the Paris library states lanus ”), was bought in 1870 for the that he finished its rubrication
Cambridge university library. on that day. 2 vols, fol., 641 leaves
(v.) and (vi.) Donatus. Two different of 2 columns of 42 lines each, exeditions of 14(7)leaveseach, 27lines cept that in some copies the
(B. Mus., C. 18.e 1, Nos. 2 and 5). columns of pp. 1-9 contain 40 lines
(vii.) Donatus of 30 lines, 12 (?) leaves; only, while the 10th page has 2
a fragment of the 8th (?) in the columns of 41 lines each, though
Mainz library. the difference in the number of
(viii.) 36-line Bible. 2 vols, fol., 882 lines makes no difference in the leaves, with 2 columns of 36 lines space which they occupy. each on a page. Some biblio- (vii.) 42-line Cantica ad Matutinas. graphers call this the Pfister Bible, The first and only leaf known is assuming that Pfister printed it. in the Paris library. It is printed
The Paris library possesses a paper on vellum, and corresponds in copy, and also a separate copy of every respect to the 42-line Bible, the last leaf, which bears the MS. having double columns, 42 lines, date 1461. Other copies exist in &c.
The above four types and the books printed with them (besides a few others printed by Albrecht Pfister at Bamberg) are the only ones that stand in close connexion with the question regarding the introduction, or the possible invention, of printing at Mainz. It has been pointed out above that one of the initial M’s of the 30-line indulgence of 1454 occurs again in an indulgence of 1489, printed by Schoeffer; hence types 3 and 4 and the books printed with them must be ascribed to this printer, in spite of the fact that the capital P found in the indulgence does not seem to occur again in the 42- line Bible. No further trace of the brief type 4 has yet been found, and perhaps Schoeffer melted it down for his other types. As Schoeffer. in the colonhon of the Donatus (v.) which bears his name alone, says that it was printed “cum suis capitalibus,” and as these capitals gradually disappear after 1459 and the type of the 42-line Bible is no longer found after 1456, we must presume that the seven incunabula mentioned above were printed by Peter Schoeffer alone before he entered (in 1457) into partnership with Johan Fust.
There is no such certainty as regards types 1 and 2 and the books printed with them. If the 31-line indulgence may be assumed to have been printed at Mainz, its printer was in all probability Johan Gutenberg, though it would seem from a lawsuit of 1455 (see p. 690 below) between him and Fust that in that year Gutenberg had not yet printed anything, and in 1454 (1455) Fust evidently called him to account for not having produced anything. Certain circumstances point to Albrecht Pfister as the printer of the eight incunabula in the left-hand column. First, he undoubtedly printed with type 1 in that city as early as 1461, for on 14th February of that year he issued in that type an edition of Boner’s Edelstein (88 leaves, fol., with wood engravings), and printed with the same type at least eight other works, one of which was issued in 1462, the seven others without a date. Secondly, most of the copies of the 36-line Bible were at one time or another preserved in the libraries of Bavaria, and a great number of fragments have been discovered in monasteries in that country, even in a register of the abbey of St Michael at Bamberg of the year 1460. Thirdly, a transfer of type from Gutenberg to Pfister is contrary to all analogy in the infancy of printing, when every printer started with a type of his own making. But, as there is no direct evidence as to who really possessed types 1 and 2 before 1460, we have not felt justified in assigning the 31-line indulgence and the other seven incunabula (including the 36-line Bible) to Pfister.
It is alleged that, in consequence of the lawsuit between Gutenberg and Fust, the former was deprived of all tools, &c., which he had made, or is supposed to have made, with the money which the latter had advanced to him, and that afterwards a certain Dr Homery or Humery, a syndic of Mainz, lent him fresh money to enable him to establish another printing office. This allegation is made on the strength of a letter of obligation (of 26th February 1468), given by Dr Homery to Adolph, the archbishop of Mainz, by which he acknowledges to have received from the said archbishop “several forms, letters, instruments, implements, and other things belonging to the work of printing, which Johan Gutenberg had left after his death, and which had belonged and still did belong to him (Dr Homery).” It is presumed that with these types, which we may call the Mainz type No. 5, Gutenberg printed (i.) Joannes de Balbis, Catholicon, 1460, 373 leaves, folio, 2 columns of 66 lines each, copies of which exist in the Cambridge university library, three in the British Museum, two in the Paris library, in Lord Spencer’s library, in the Wolfenbüttel and Mainz libraries, &c.; (ii.) Matthaeus de Cracovia, Tractatus Rationis, 22 leaves, 4to, 30 lines, three copies of which are in the British Museum, one at Althorp, one in the Cambridge library, two in the Paris library, &c.; (iii. and iv.) Thomas Aquinas, Summa de Articulis Fidei, two editions in 4to, the first of 13 leaves and 34 lines,—two copies of which are in the British Museum, one in Lord Spencer’s, the Cambridge library, &c.—and the second of 12 leaves and 36 lines, —copies in the British Museum and the Paris library; and (v.) indulgence of 1461 of 15 lines.
On 18th January 1465 Adolph II., archbishop of Mainz, appointed “Johan Gudenberg, on account of his grateful and willing service, his servant and courtier (dhiener und hoffgesind) for life, promising to supply him with clothing and each year 20 ‘ malter ’ of corn and 2 ‘fuder’ of wine.” It has always been inferred from this that Gutenberg had quitted Mainz and gone to Eltville (Elfeld) to reside at the archbishop’s court, and that, his dignity as courtier preventing him from printing himself, he passed the Catholicon types on to Henry Bechtermuncze at Eltville. But recent researches have shown that Gutenberg remained at Mainz till his death in 1468. We certainly find in 1467 the Catholicon type with some additions (already found in the indulgence of 1461) at Eltville near Mainz, in the hands of Henry and Nicholas Bechtermuncze and Wigandus Spyes de Orthenberg, who finished on 4th November of that year (vi.) Vοcabularius ex quo (a Latin-German vocabulary) in 4to, 166 leaves, 35 lines, the only known copy of which is in the Paris library, and (vii.) Vocabularius ex quo, second edition, with colophon dated 5th June 1469, 4to, 165 leaves, 35 lines, copies of which exist in Lord Spencer’s library, at Blenheim, and in the Paris library. Now it is asked how the Bechtermunczes could have been using the Catholicon type in 1467, if we assume that it was this type to which Homery refers in his letter of obligation as being in his possession. Some, therefore, conclude that the Catholicon and the four other works in the same type were printed at Mainz by Henry Bechtermuncze, who may afterwards have transferred his printing office to Eltville. In that case it is difficult to see what type Homery could refer to, unless it were type 2, a close imitation of which, if not the actual tvne, was used by Nicholas
Bechtermuncze at Eltville in printing (12th March 1472) a third edition of the Vocabularius ex quo, 166 leaves, 35 lines, copies of which are preserved in the Paris and Hamburg libraries, and an edition of Thomas Aquinas, Summa de Articulis Fidei, 12 leaves, 35 lines (Munich library).
It is necessary to point out that for nearly seventy years eight books—(1) Prognostication or Calendar ; (2) Hermann de Saldis, Speculum Sacerdotum; (3) Tractatus de Celebratione Missarum. ; (4) a work in German treating of the necessity of councils; (5) Dialogus inter Hugonem Cathonem et Oliverium super Libertate Ecclesiastica; (6) Sifridus de Arena, Determinatio Duarum Quaestionum ; (7) Id., Responsio ad Quatuor Quaestiones; (8) Klagspiegel, or New geteutscht Rechtbuch— have been ascribed to Gutenberg on the strength (a ) of the date 1460, which was said to be found in the Prognostication in the Darmstadt library, and (5) of a so-called rubrication alleged to be in a copy of the Tractatus de Celebratione Missarum, in which “Johannes dictus a bono monte” and Johannes Numeister are represented as offering this work on 19th June 1463 to the Carthusians at Mainz. But the date in the Prognostication has been falsified from 1482 into 1460, and the rubrication in the Tractatus is a forgery. The eight books are now considered to have been printed by Erhard Reuwich.
When we set aside the above works, there is no further difficulty as regards the history of Mainz printing. Fust and Schoeffer worked together from 1457 to 1466, starting in August 1457 with an edition of the Psalterium, printed in large missal types, which, as far as we know, is the first printed book which bears a date, besides the place where it was printed and the name of the printers. It was reprinted with the same types in 1459 (the second printed book with date, place, and name of printer), in 1490, and in 1502 (the last work of Schoeffer, who had manufactured its types). In 1459 Fust and Schoeffer also published Gul. Durantus, Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, with the small type (usually called Durandus type) with which they continued to print long afterwards. In 1460 they published the Constitutiones of Pope Clement V., the text printed in a type (Clement type) about a third larger than the Durandus. This type was, however, in existence in 1459, as the colophon of the Durandus is printed with it. Spread of Typography.
Having explained the early printing of Mainz, in so far as it bears upon the controversy (see below) as to where and by whom the art of printing was invented, we can follow its spread to other countries. After Mainz it was first established in 1460 at Strasburg, where the first printers were,—1. Johann Mentelin, who completed a Latin Bible in that year, according to a rubrication in a copy at Freiburg in the Breisgau; 2. Adolph Rusch de Inguilen, who is presumed to be the printer of the undated books with a singularly-shaped R, c . 1464; 3. Henricus Eggestein, 1471; 4. George Husner; 5. Martin Flach, &c. In 1461 at Bamberg, where the first printer was Albrecht Pfister, who in that year published Boner’s Edelstein, though it is still doubtful whether he did not print earlier (see above); 2. Joh. Sensenschmidt, c. 1480. 1465 at
Subiaco; first and only printers Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannarts, who completed in that year an edition of Cicero, De Oratore, and Lactantius, and removed to Rome in 1467. 1466 at
Cologne, the printers being—1. Ulrich Zell, who published in that year Chrysostom, Super Psalmo Quinquagesimo Liber Primus, though it is presumed that he printed in 1463; 2. Arnold Ther Hoernen, 1470; 3. Johannes Koelhoff of Lübeck, 1470, who printed the Cologne Chronicle in 1499; 4. Nicolaus Götz, 1474; 5. Goiswinus Gops, 1475; 6. Petrus de Olpe, 1476 (not 1470); 7. Conradus Winter of Homburg, 1476; 8. Job. Guldenschaaf, 1477; 9. Henricus Quentel, 1479, &c. 1467 at Eltville; first printers Nicolas and Henry Bechtermuncze and Wygandus Spyes de Orthenberg, who completed in that year a Vocabularius ex quo. 1467 at Rome; first printers Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannarts from Subiaco, who published an edition of Cicero’s Epistolae ad Familiares, and Ulrich Hahn or Udalricus Gallus, who issued on 31st December 1467 Turrecremata’s Meditationes. 1468 at Augsburg; first printer Günther Zainer or Zeyner. Same year at Basel; first printer Berthold Rot of Hanau. Same year at Marienthal; Brothers of the Common Life. 1469 at Venice; printers,—1. Johannes of Spires; 2. his brother Vindelinus of Spires; 3. Christopher Valdarfer; 4. Nicolas Jenson, &c. The further spread of typography is indicated by the following data :—1470 at Nuremberg (Johan Sensenschmidt, Friedr. Creusner, Anton Koberger, &c.), Berona or Beromünster in Switzerland (Helyas Helye alias De Llouffen), Foligno (Emilianus de Orfinis and Johannes Numeister), Trevi (Johann Reynard), Savigliano (Hans Glim), Paris (first printers the three partners Ulrich Gering, Michael Friburger, Martin Krantz); 1471 at Spires, Bologna, Ferrara, Florence, Milan, Naples, Pavia, Treviso, Savigliano (?);
1472 at Esslingen, Cremona, Mantua, Padua, Brescia, Parma, Monreale (Mondovi), Fivizzano, Verona, Iesi (?), St Ursino (?);
1473 at Lauingen, Ulm (perhaps as early as 1469), Merseburg, Alost, Utrecht, Lyons, Messina, Buda; 1474 at Louvain, Genoa, Como, Savona, Turin, Vicenza, Valencia (?); 1475 at Lübeck, Breslau, Blaubeuren, Burgdorf, Trent, Cracow (?), Modena, Reggio (in Calabria), Cagli, Caselle or Casale, Pieve ( Piove) di Sacco, Perugia, Piacenza, Saragossa; 1476 at Rostock, Bruges, Brussels, Angers, Toulouse, Polliano (Pogliano); 1477 at Reichenstein, Deventer, Gouda, Delft, Westminster, Lucca, Ascoli, Palermo, Seville; 1478 at Oxford, St Maartensdyk, Colle, Schussenried (in Würtemberg), Eichstädt, Geneva, Vienne, Trogen (?), Chablis, Cosenza, Prague, Barcelona; 1479 at Erfurt, Würzburg, Nimeguen, Zwolle, Poitiers, Toscolano, Pinerolo, Novi, Lerida, Segorbe; 1480 at London, St Albans (or in 1479), Oudenarde, Hasselt, Reggio (in Modena), Salamanca, Toledo, Nonantola, Friuli (?), Caen; 1481 at Passau, Leipsic, Magdeburg, Treves, Urach, Casale di San Vaso, Saluzzo, Albi, Rougemont (?); 1482 at Reutlingen, Memmingen, Metz, Pisa, Aquila, Antwerp, Promentour, Zamora, Odense; 1483 at Leyden, Kuilenburg (Culenborg), Ghent, Chartres, Chalons-sur-Marne (?), Troyes, Gerona, Stockholm; 1484 at Bois-le-Duc, Siena, Udine, Soncino, Winterberg, Klosterneuburg, Rennes, Loudéac; 1485 at Heidelberg, Ratisbon, Pescia, Vercelli, Tréguier or Lautreguet, Salins, Burgos, Palma, Xeres; 1486 at Münster, Stuttgart, Chia-vasco, Voghera, Casal Maggiore, Abbeville, Brünn, Schleswig; 1487 at Ingolstadt, Gaeta, Rouen, Murcia; 1488 at Stendal, Viterbo, Gradisca, Besançon, Constantinople; 1489 at Hagenau, San Cucufat (near Barcelona), Coria, Pamplona, Tolosa, Lisbon; 1490 at Orleans, Grenoble, Dole; 1491 at Hamburg, Nozzano, Goupillières, Angoulême, Dijon, Lantenac; 1492 at Zinna, Valladolid, Leiria; 1493 at Lüneburg, Cagliari, Freiburg (in Breisgau), Urbino, Acqui; 1494 at Oppenheim, Monterey, Braga; 1495 at Freisingen, Freiberg, Scandiano, Forli, Limoges, Schoonhoven (monastery Den Hern), Wadstena, Cettinje; 1496 at Offenburg, Provins, Granada; 1497 at Munich, Barco, Carmagnola, Avignon; 1498 at Tübingen, Perigueux, Schiedam, Tarragona; 1499 at Montserrat, Madrid; 1500 at Olmütz, Pforzheim, Sursée, Perpignan, Valenciennes, Jaen. Printing was introduced into Scotland in 1505 by the establishment of Andrew Millar at Edinburgh, and into Ireland, at Dublin, in 1551. As for non-European countries and towns, printing was established in Mexico in 1544, at Goa about 1550, at Tranquebar in 1569, Terceira in the Azores 1583, Lima 1585, Manila and Macao (China) 1590, in Hayti in the beginning of the 17th century, at Puebla in 1612, Cambridge (Mass.) 1638, Batavia 1668, Tiflis 1701, Germantown 1735, Ceylon 1737, Halifax (Nova Scotia) 1766, Madras 1772, Calcutta 1778, Buenos Ayres 1789, Bombay 1792, in Egypt (at Alexandria, Cairo, and Gizeh) in 1798, at Sydney 1802, Cape Town 1806, Montevideo 1807, Sarepta 1808, Valparaiso 1810, Astrakhan 1815, in Sumatra and at Hobart Town and Santiago (in Chili) in 1818, in Persia (at Teheran) in 1820, and at Chios about 1821.
Till the moment (say 1477) that printing spread to almost all the chief towns of Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Spain, England, not a single printer carried away with him a set of types or a set of punches or moulds from the master who had taught him, but, in setting up his printing office, each man cast a set of types for his own use, always imitating as closely as possible the handwriting of some particular manuscript which he or his patron desired to publish. When we compare Schoeffer's 30-line indulgence of 1454 with a manuscript copy of the same indulgence dated 10th April 1454, now in the hands of a private collector at Wiesbaden, we see that the types used in printing that document were specially cast for the purpose after the model of the handwriting employed for the written copies. We know also that the types of the 36-line and 42-line Bibles and those of the psalter of 1457 are the closest possible imitations of the ornamental church handwriting customary at the time of their production. Also, when we compare the 31-line indulgence of 1454 with the German blockbook called the Enndtchrist, and both in their turn with the German MSS. of that period (especially the manuscript portions in the printed copies of the indulgences), we see that the cutter of the text type of the indulgence, as well as the engraver of the blockbook, formed his characters according to some German handwriting (book hand) of the period. This imitation extended, not only to the shape of the letters, but likewise to all those combinations of letters (double p, double f, double s, st, ti, tu, re, cu, cl, si, de, co, ci, te, ce, or, ve, po, fa, he, be, &c.) and contractions (for pro, -urn, -em, -en, the-, uer, -bus, -bis, sed, am, tur, qui, quae, quod, secundum, &c. ) which were then, and had been for many centuries, in use by scribes. In most, if not all cases, the MSS. which the printers imitated were indigenous to the place where they settled. Thus the first printers of Subiaco, though they were Germans and had most probably learned the art of casting types and printing at Mainz, clearly cut their types after the model of some Italian MS. which was free from any Gothic influence, but written in a pure Caroline minuscle hand, differing but slightly from the Caroline minuscles which the same printers adopted two years afterwards at Rome. The first Paris printers started in 1470 with a type cast in the most exact manner, on the model of the Caroline minuscle handwriting then in vogue at Paris. John de Westphalia, who introduced printing into Belgium, used from the beginning a type which he calls Venetian. Where therefore there is a great similarity, but no absolute identity, between the types of two printers (e.g., Schoeffer and Ulr. Zell), it should be attributed to the similarity of the handwritings which the printers followed rather than to any attempt on their part to imitate each other’s types. To this universal system (clearly discernible in the first twenty-five years of printing) of each printer setting up business with a new type cast by himself, there are, according to the conjectures of a good many bibliographers, only two exceptions. One is Albrecht Pfister (see above); the other is the Bechtermunczes of Eltville (see above).
Another most important feature in the earliest books is that the printers imitated, not only the handwriting, with all its contractions, combined letters, &c., but all the other peculiarities of the MSS. they copied. There is in the first place the unevenness of the lines, which very often serves as a guide to the approximate date of a book, especially when we deal with the works of the same printer, since each commenced with uneven lines, and gradually made them less uneven, and finally even. This unevenness was unavoidable in manuscripts as well as in block-books; but in the earliest printed books it is regarded as evidence of the inability of the printers to space out their lines. If this theory be correct, this inability was perhaps owing to the types being perforated and connected with each other by a thread, or to some other cause which has not yet been clearly ascertained. But it is not impossible that the unevenness was simply part and parcel of the system of imitating MSS., and that only gradually (about 1473 or 1474, but in some cases later) printers began to see that even lines looked better than uneven. This seems clear when we observe that the imitation of MSS. was carried so far that sometimes things which deviated from the work of the scribe, but had accidentally been printed in, were afterwards erased and altered in conformity with the MS. The Paris library, for instance, possesses two copies of the Liber Epistolarum of Gasparinus Pergamensis (printed at Paris in 1470) in both of which the initial G of the first line and the initial M of the fourth line were printed in, and, whilst they have been allowed to remain in one of the copies, in the other they were regarded as a fault and replaced by a rubricated L and Μ.
In the second place the initials of books or the chapters of books in MSS., and again in block-books and the earliest products of ]>rinting, were always, or at least in most cases (they are printed in the indulgences of 1454), omitted by the scribe and the printer, and afterwards filled in by the rubricator. As the latter artists were sometimes illiterate and very often filled up the gap by a wrong initial, we find in a good many MSS. as well as early printed books small letters written either in the margin or in the blank left for the initial, to guide the rubricator. In most cases where these letters (which are now called initial directors) were written in the margin, they were placed as much as possible on the edges of the pages in order that they might be cut away by the binder as unsightly; but in a vast number of incunabula they have remained till the present day. After a few years these initial directors were in a good many books printed in (in lower-case type) with the text. In all cases, whether written or printed, they were meant to be covered by the illuminated initial; but, as a matter of fact, the latter very seldom covers the initial director so completely as to make it invisible, and in a good many cases the intended illumination was never carried into effect.
With respect to the hyphens, which were used in the 1454 indulgences and the 36-line and 42-line Bibles, always outside the printed margin, some of the earliest printers did not employ them at the moment that they started their presses, and in the case of some printers the non-use or use of hyphens, and their position outside or inside the printed margin, serve as a guide to the dating, of their products. After about 1472 they become more uniform in their shape and more generally used.
The use of signatures is confined in MSS. mostly to mark the quires, and in block-books to mark each sheet or page; they do not occur in printed books before 1472 (at least in no earlier book with a date), when they appear in Joh. Nider’s Praeceptorium Divinae Legis, published by Johan Koelhoff at Cologne.
Catchwords (custodes) were used for the first time about 1469 by Johannes of Spires, at Venice, in the first edition of Tacitus.
Pagination or rather foliation was first used by Am. Ther Hoernen, at Cologne in 1471, in Adrianus’s Liber de Remediis Fortuitorum Casuum, having each leaf (not page) numbered by figures placed in the end of the line on the middle of each right-hand page.
The practice among early printers of imitating and reproducing MSS. was not abandoned till many years after the first printed book (1454) made its appearance; and, looking at the books printed, say from 1454 to 1477, from our present standpoint of daily improvement and alteration, the printing of that period may be said to have been almost wholly stagnant, without any improvement or modification. If some printers (for instance, Sweynheym and Pannarts at Subiaco and Rome, and Nicolas Jenson at Venice) produced handsomer books than others, this is to be attributed to the beauty of the MSS. imitated and the paper used rather than to any superior skill. Generally speaking, therefore, we shall not be very far wrong in saying that the workmanship of Ketelaer and De Leempt’s first book, published at Utrecht c. 1473, and that of Caxton’s first book issued at Westminster in 1477, exhibit the very same stage of the art of printing as the 1454 indulgences. If therefore any evidence were found that Ketelaer and De Leempt and Caxton had really printed their first books in 1454, there would be nothing in the workmanship of these books to prevent us from placing them in that year. And conversely, if the indulgences of 1454 had been issued without a date or without any names to indicate their approximate date, their workmanship would invariably induce bibliographers to ascribe them to circa 1470, if not somewhat later. Even after 1477 the alterations in the mode of printing books proceeded very slowly and almost imperceptibly. It came to be no longer a universal system for printers to begin business by casting a type for themselves, but some received their types from one of their colleagues. And, though there were still many varieties of types, one sort began to make its appearance in two or three different places. The combinations of letters were the first to disappear; but the contractions remain in a good many books even of the 17th century.
Some theories have been based on, and others have been considered to be upset by, the supposition that the early printers always required as much type as printers of the present day, or at any rate so much as would enable them to set up, not only a whole quire of 4 or 5 sheets ( = 8 or 10 leaves = 16 or 20 pages), but even two quires ( = 40 pages). Consequently calculations have been made that, for instance, the printer of the 42-line Bible required a fount of at least 120,000 characters. But, though the Speculum Humanae Salvationis seems to have been printed by whole sheets (2 pages), there are numberless proofs that many early books were printed page by page, even when in small 4to. For instance, in some books it has been observed that portions of the types with which the text of the first, second, or third pages of a quire had been printed were used to “lock up” the types employed for the later pages of the same quire, as is evident from the blank impressions of such portions being found on these later pages. Again, in some books two, three, or four blank leaves are found at the end, showing a miscalculation of the printer. Moreover, the numerous itinerant printers of the 15th century, who established a press for a short time wherever they went, prove that the furniture of the earliest printing offices must have been of no great extent.
The Invention Controversy.
Now that we have traced the art of printing from the moment (1454) that it made its appearance in a perfect state at Mainz, and have followed its spread to all the chief places of Europe till 1500, we must take notice of the controversy which has been carried on for nearly four hundred years as to when, where, and by whom the art was invented. For this purpose we will gather up into a chronological sequence (a ) a few of the most important expressions used by the earliest printers in their colophons, (6) whatever documentary evidence there may be on the subject, and (c) some accounts of the earliest authors on the subject. (The letters A, B, &c., are for the sake of convenient reference.)
The earliest testimony (A) to which we may refer is the notarial instrument, dated 6th November 1455, of the lawsuit between Fust and Gutenberg, whereby the former sought to recover 2026 guilders from the latter in repayment of 1600 guilders (800 advanced in 1450 or 1449 and another 800 in 1452), with the interest thereon. Fust speaks here of “the work” (line 24), and of “our common work” (line 60); Gutenberg speaks of “tools” in preparation, “workmen’s wages, house-rent, vellum, paper, ink, &c.” (lines 37- 40), of “such work” (41), and of “the work of the books” (42); whereas the judges speak of “the work to the profit of both” (49), and “their common use” (60). (B) In the earliest book pub lished with a date (the Mainz psalter, issued 14th August 1457 by Fust and Peter Schoeffer) it is said that it was perfected at Mainz by an “adinventio artificiosa imprimendi ac caracterizandi absque calami ulla exaratione” (repeated and varied later; see p. 681 above). &c.; (C) In 1460 the Catholicon was published at Mainz, without the name of the printer; but the colophon, after stating that the book was printed at Mainz, which town God’s mercy had deigned to prefer above other nations of the earth, adds (D) that the book was printed and completed “non calami, stili, aut pennae suffragio, sed mira patronarum formarumque concordia, proporcione, et modulo.” This work is considered to have been printed by Gutenberg, and the mention of God’s mercy is regarded as an allusion to the invention of printing. The phrase is, however, also found in the Liber Sextus Decretalium, in the Summa of Thomas Aquinas, and in the Clementinas, published respectively on 17th December 1465, 6th March, and 8th October 1467, by Fust and Schoeffer. (E) On 17th January 1465 Adolph II., archbishop of Mainz, by a public decree, appointed Gutenberg as his servant in reward for “his services,” but he does not speak of him as the inventor of printing, nor even as a printer. (F) In the Grammatica Rhythmica, published in 1466 by Fust and Schoeffer, the third line of the colophon runs: “Hinc Nazareni sonet oda per ora Johannis,” which was formerly regarded as an allusion to Johann Fust or Johann Gutenberg, but which more probably refers to Johann Brannen or Fons, the author of the grammar. (G) On 26th February 1468 Dr Homery wrote to the archbishop of Mainz the letter quoted above, from which it may be inferred that Gutenberg had been a printer, though not a word is said as to his being the inventor of printing. (H) In 1468 Schoeffer reprinted Fons’s Grammatica, and in the colophon it is said: “At Moguntina sum fusus in urbe libellus meque (the book) domus genuit unde caragma venit.” (I) Schoeffer published on 24th May 1468 the first edition of Justiniani Imper. Institutionum Juris Libri VI., cum Glossa. To this were added by way of colophon some verses commencing: “Scema tabernaculi, &c.,” in which it is said that (the ornament of the church) Jesus “hos dedit eximios sculpendi in arte magistros . . . Quos genuit ambos urbs Moguntina Johannes, librorum insignes prothocaragmaticos,” which is regarded as an allusion to Johann Gutenberg and Johann Fust as first printers. (K) In the same year (1468) Johannes Andreas, bishop of Aleria, says, in the dedication of his edition of St Jerome’s Epistles, published in that year (13th December) at Rome, to Pope Paul II., that “Germany is to be honoured for ever as having been the inventress of the greatest utilities. Cardinal Cusa wished that the sacred art of printing, which then (under Cardinal Cusa, who died 11th August 1464) seemed to have arisen in Germany, were brought to Rome.” (L) In 1470 Guil. Fichet, in an octastichon inserted in the Paris edition of 1470 of the Letters of Gasparinus of Bergamo, exhorts Paris to take up the almost divine art of writing (printing) which Germany is acquainted with. In the same year Erhard Windsberg writes to the same effect in an epigram inserted in the Epistolae Phalaridis published at Paris about 1470. (M)
In 1471 Ludov. Carbo speaks, in the dedication of the Letters of Pliny to Borso, duke of Modena, of the Germans having invented printing. Nicolaus Gupalatinus speaks (Venice, 1471) of a German being the inventor of printing, and Nicolaus Perottus of the art which had lately come from Germany. (N) On 21st May 1471 Nicolas Jenson published an edition of Quintilian, edited and revised by Ognibene de Lonigo (Omnibonus Leonicenus), who in the preface speaks of its printer as “librariae artis mirabilis inventor, non ut scribantur calamo libri, sed veluti gemma imprimantur, ac prope sigillo, primus omnium ingeniose demonstravit.” (O) About 1472 the first three printers of Paris published Gasparinus Perga-mensis’s Orthographiae Liber, to which is prefixed (in the copy of the university of Basel) a letter, dated 1st January, from Guillaume Fichet, prior of the Sorbonne, to Robert Gaguin, in which he says that “it is rumoured in Germany that not far from the city of Mainz a certain Johann Gutenberg (Johannes, cui cognomen Bone-montano) first of all invented the art of printing (impressoriam artem), by means of which books are made with letters of metal, not with a reed (as the ancients did), nor with the pen (as is done at present).” (P) On 14th July 1474 Joh. Philippus de Lignamine published at Rome Chronica Summorum Pontificum Imperatorumque, in which we find, between two entries, relating one to 14th July 1459 and the other to 1st October 1459, an undated paragraph in which it is said that Jacobus with the surname of Gutenberg of Strasburg and a certain other one named Fustus, “imprimendarum litterarum in membranis cum metallicis formis periti, trecentas cartas quisque eoram per diem facere innotescunt apud Moguntiam Germanie civitatem.” The same is said of Mentelin, and (under 1464) of Conrad Sweynheym, Arnold Pannarts, and Udalricus Gallus. (Q) On 23d May 1476 Peter Schoeffer issued the third edition of the Institutiones of Justinian, with the same imprint as in the edition of 1468 (see testimony I), but with the addition that Mainz is the “impressoriae artis inventrix elimatrixque prima.” (R) In 1478 an edition of the Fasciculus Temporum was issued at Cologne, in which it is stated under the year 1457 that the printers of books were multiplied on earth, deriving the origin of their art from Mainz. The earlier editions merely stated that the printers of books were multiplied on earth. (S) In 1483 Matthias Palmerius of Pisa published at Venice the Chron. Euseb., in which under the year 1457 it is stated that students owe a great debt to Germany, where Johannes Guttenberg zum Jungen, knight of Mainz, invented the art of printing in 1440. (T) In the same year Jac. Phil. Foresta of
Bergamo published Supplementum Chronicorum, in which he says under the year 1458 that the art of printing books was first discovered in Germany, according to some by Guthimberg of Strasburg, according to others by Faust (see P), according to others by Nicolas Jenson (see N). (V) On 6th March 1492 Peter Schoeffer published the Niedersächsische Chronik of Conrad Botho, saying in the colophon that it was “geprent . . . in . . . Mentz, die eyn anefangk is der prentery.” (X) At the end of 1494 two Heidelberg professors, Adam Wernher and Joh. Herbst, composed some Latin verses in honour of Johannes Gensfleisch (a family name by which Gutenberg was known, and which was turned into the Latin Ansicarus), whom they called “primus librorum impressor” and “impressoriae artis inventor primus.” (Y) In 1499 Jacobus Wimpheling (born at Schlettstadt 1450, died 1528) published (at Mainz, by P. Friedberg) an Oratio in Memoriam Marsilii ab Inghen (d. 1396), in which he, on leaf 22a, praises Joannes Ansicarus in verse on account of his invention at Mainz. (Z) These verses are preceded by an epitaph on Johann Gensfleisch, “artis impressoriae inventor” and “repertor,” written in Latin by Adam Gelthus, a relative of Gutenberg. (AA) In the same year Polydore Vergil (De Inventoribus Rerum, Venice, 1499, lib. ii. cap. 7) says that a certain Peter [Schoeffer ?], a German, invented in 1442 the art of printing at Mainz in Germany, as he had heard from the latter’s countryman; this statement was repeated in a Venice edition of 1503. In later editions “Peter” was altered to “Job. Gutenberg.” (BB) In the same year Koelhoff, printer at Cologne, published Cronica van der billiger Stat van Coellen, in which on fol. 312b it is said: (1) The art of printing was found first of all in Germany at Mainz about the year 1440; (2) from that time till 1450 the art and what belonged to it were investigated; (3) and in 1450, when it was a golden year (jubilee), they began to print, and the first book that they printed was the Bible in Latin, in a large letter, resembling that with which at present missals are printed. (4) Although the art was found at Mainz in the manner in which it is generally employed now, yet the first prefiguration was found in Holland from out the Donatuses which were printed there before that time, and from and out of them was taken the beginning of the aforesaid art, and it was found much more masterly and exact (subtilis ) than that other manner was, and has become more and more artistic. (5) Omnibonus wrote in a preface to Quintilian, and in some other books too, that a Walloon from France, named Nicol. Jenson (see N), discovered this art; but that is untrue, for there are those still alive who testify that books were printed at Venice before Nicol. Jenson came there, and began to cut and make letters. (6) But the first inventor of printing was a citizen of Mainz, named Junker Johan Gudenburch. (7) From Mainz the art was introduced first of all into Cologne, then into Strasburg, and afterwards into Venice. (8) The origin and progress of the art were told to the writer verbally by Ulrich Zell of Hanau, still printer at Cologne (anno 1499), through whom the said art came to Cologne. (CC) In 1501 Jacob Wimpheling (see Y), who stated in his Oratio Querulosa contra Invasores Sacerdotum, Flaminum, &c., published at Delft c. 1495, that chalcography had been invented at Mainz, published a work (Germania, Strasburg, Job. Priiss, 1501) in which he says (on p. 43) that the invention was made at Strasburg by Johann Gutenberg of Strasburg, and that it was perfected at Mainz. (DD) In 1503 Johann Schoeffer (the son of Peter Schoeffer and the grandson of Johann Fust) published an edition of Hermes Trismegistus, in which he represents himself as one of the most distinguished citizens of Mainz, descended from the most fortunate race who invented the art of printing. (EE) In 1504 Ivo Wittig, who was a relative of Gutenberg, and a canon and the keeper of the seal of the St Victor cathedral near Mainz (of which Gutenberg had been a lay member), erected in the house “Zum Gutenberg” a memorial stone and an epitaph to Joh. Gutenberg of Mainz, “qui primus omnium litteras aere imprimendas invenit.” (FF) In 1505, in the German translation of Livy published by Johann Schoeffer (see KK), the dedication to the emperor Maximilian, which was probably written by Ivo Wittig (see EE), speaks of Johann Güttenbergk as inventor of printing (1450) and Johann Faust and Peter Schoeffer as improvers of the art. This work was reprinted six times (1514, 1523, 1533, 1551, 1553) with the same dedication; but in 1509 the Breviarium Moguntinum says that it was printed at the expense and trouble of Johann
Schoeffer, whose grandfather (i.e., Johann Fust) was the first inventor and author of the art of printing (see DD). (GG) In 1505 Jacob Wimpheling, in his Epithoma Gemnanorum (Strasburg, 1505), asserts (on leaf xxxviii b. and xxxixa.) that in 1440 Johann Gutenberg of Strasburg invented there the art of printing. And in 1507, in his Catal. Episcoporum Argent. (Strasburg, 1507), he says that the art was invented, though in an imperfect manner, by a certain Strasburger, who afterwards went to Mainz and joined others working and trying the same art, where it was, Under the guidance of Johann Gensfleisch, perfected in the house “boni montis” (Gutenberg). This he repeated in 1515. (HH) About 1506 Johannes Trithemius wrote his Chronicon of Spanheim, published at Frankfort in 1601, in which he says (p. 366) that the art of printing books was discovered afresh at Mainz by Johan Gutenberg, who, after having spent all his property in accomplishing the new invention, perfected it by the advice and assistance of Johann Fust. The first propagator of the new art was, after the inventor, Peter Schoeffer. (II) In 1515 Johann Schoeffer published Job. Trithemius’s Compendium sive Breviarium Historiae Francorum, and said in the colophon that the book was published at Mainz, the first inventress of the art of printing, by Johann Schoeffer, grandson of the late Johann Fust, the first author of the said art, who finally from his own genius commenced to excogitate and to investigate the art in 1450, and in 1452 perfected it and commenced printing, assisted by many necessary inventions of Peter Schoeffer von Gernsheim, his servant and adopted son. Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer kept this art secret, binding all their servants and domestics by oath never to reveal it; but in 1462 it was spread by the same domestics into divers countries. (KK) On 9th December 1518 the emperor Maximilian accorded to Johann Schoeffer the privilege of printing Livy (1518-1519), and says in it that “he has learned and been advised on the faith of worthy testimonies that the ingenious invention of chalcography was effected by the printer’s grandfather.” (LL) In 1519 Joh. Thurmayer Aventinus (1474-1534) wrote that “in 1450 Joannes Faustus, a German, a citizen of Mainz, invented a new kind of writing, called chalcography, and completed it in two years; it was kept secret by him and Peter Schoeffer, his son-in-law, but divulged in Germany ten years afterwards by Faust’s servant, Johannes Guttenberger, a Strasburger.” (MM) In a pedigree of Lourens Janszoon Coster of Haarlem and his descendants, drawn up not later than 1520, it is asserted that in 1446 “he brought the first print into the world.” This document, of which the date 1446 seems to have been altered into 1440, is preserved in the Haarlem town library. (NN) In 1520 Johan Schott, a printer at Strasburg and grandson of Johan Mentelin, the first printer of that town, published an edition of Ptolemy, at the end of which he printed the arms of his grandfather with the following legend: “Insigne Schottorum Familiae ab Friderico Rom. Imp. III. Joan. Mentelio primo Typographiae Inventori ac suis concessum: Anno Christi 1466.” Apart from the assertion that Mentelin was the inventor of printing, we may remark that the emperor Frederick III. raised Mentelin to the rank of a nobleman in 1466 and granted him new arms. (OO) About 1533 the Neapolitan Mariangelo Accorso, who had resided at the court of Charles V., wrote on an edition of Donatus (in the possession of Aldus Manutius, jun.) that “Joh. Faust of Mainz first discovered the art of printing with metal types, which afterwards he made of lead; his son Peter Schoeffer added afterwards much to polish the said art. This Donatus and Confessionalia were printed first of all in 1450. Faust derived the suggestion from a Donatus printed before in Holland from an engraved block.” This paragraph is found on p. 411 of the Biblioth. Apost. Vaticana of Angelo Roccha (Rome, 1591). Some consider its latter part to have been derived from the Cologne Chronicle (ΒΒ), and it seems probable that it was a mixture of some of the above testimonies. (PP) In 1536 Johan Schott (see NN) published Historien Handt-Buchlein (Strasburg, 1536), in which (on leaf b 1 and b 2 ) he says that “Hans Mentlin of Strasburg invented the art, which, through infidelity, was brought to Mainz.” On the strength of this and other statements (CC, GG, NN) the bicentenary of the Strasburg invention was celebrated there in 1640. (QQ) In 1541 Joh. Arnold (Bergel or) Bergellanus, who had settled as press-reader at Mainz two years previously, published his Encomium Chalcographies (Mainz, Fr. Behem, 1541, 4to), in which the lawsuit between Fust and Gutenberg (A) is alluded to for the first time. Bergel had read Tritheim’s books (HH), in which the invention is ascribed to Johann Gutenberg with two coadjutors, Johann Faust and Peter Schoeffer, which he (Bergel) had heard confirmed in conversations with Mainz citizens; he had also seen some old tools prepared for the work by the originators which were still in existence. Gutenberg invented it in 1450. (RR) About 1561 Jan Van Zuren (boni at Haarlem in 1517) and Dirk Volkerts Coornhert (born at Amsterdam in 1522) established a printing office at Haarlem. Of the former it is alleged that he had compiled a work on the invention of printing, which is presumed to have been lost during the siege of Haarlem in 1573. It was not publicly spoken of till 1628, when Peter Scriverius published his Laurecranz voor Laurens Coster. Scriverius had only found the title, preface, and introduction, in which Van Zuren contended that the first foundations of the art were laid at Haarlem, and that it afterwards accompanied a foreigner to Mainz. In this introduction he does not mention the name of the inventor, nor a date, but points in indefinite terms to the house of the inventor as still existing. (SS) In the same year (1561) Van Zuren and Coornhert published an edition of the Officia Ciceronis, in which the latter, in a dedication to the magistracy of Haarlem, refers to the rumour that the art of printing books was invented first of all at Haarlem, and was brought to Mainz by an unfaithful servant and much improved there. He adds that very old and dignified persons had often told him, not only the family of the inventor, but also his name and surname, and had explained the first crude way of printing, and pointed out to him the house of the first printer. (TT) In 1566 Luigi Guicciardini, a Florentine nobleman who had visited the Netherlands and had resided many years at Antwerp, finished a description of the Netherlands (published in 1567), in which, alluding to Haarlem, he speaks of the invention there according to the assertions of the inhabitants, the evidence of some authors, and other remembrances; the inventor died before the perfection of his art; his servant went to Mainz, where he perfected the art, and hence the report that it was invented there. (VV) About 1568 (it is calculated) Hadrianus Junius wrote his Batavia, published at Leyden in 1588, with two prefaces, dated, the one from Leyden, 6th January 1575, the other from Delft ad annum salutis 1575. On p. 253 he says that the opinion that the forms of the letters whereby books are printed were first discovered at Mainz is very inveterate, but old and eminent inhabitants of Haarlem had assured him that they had heard from their ancestors that there lived at Haarlem, more than 128 years before, in a decent house then existing, near the marketplace, opposite the royal palace, Lourens (son of) Jan, surnamed Coster, who, while walking in the wood near Haarlem, began to shape beechen bark first into figures of letters, by which, reversely impressed one by one on paper, he composed one or two lines to serve as an example for the children of his son-in-law. When this succeeded, he began to contemplate greater things, and first of all invented, assisted by his son-in-law Thomas (son of) Peter, a more gluey and substantial kind of ink (as the ordinary ink was found to blot), with which he printed whole tablets with pictures, with the letters added. Junius had seen books of this kind printed by Coster (the beginnings of his labours) on the rectos of the leaves only, not on both sides; the book was written (in Dutch) by an anonymous author, and entitled Speculum Nostrae Salutis, in which care was taken that the blank versos could be pasted together, so that the blank pages should not present any unsightliness. Afterwards (Coster) changed the beechen characters into leaden, and the latter again into tin ones. Very ancient wine-pots cast of the remains of these types were still to be seen in the house of Lourens, which was afterwards inhabited by his great-grandson Gerard (son of) Thomas, who had died an old man a few years before. When the new merchandise attracted purchasers everywhere, workmen were added to (Lourens’s) household, among whom was a certain John (whether, as was suspected, Faust, or another of the same name, Junius did not inquire), who was bound to the work of printing by oath. But, when he thought he knew the art of joining the letters and of casting the types, &c., he stole away, when everybody had gone to church, the whole apparatus of the types and the tools prepared by his master, and hastened to Amsterdam, thence to Cologne, until he arrived at Mainz, where he could remain in safety, and, having opened a work-office, issued within the space of one year, about 1442, the Doctrinale of Alexander Gallus and the Tracts of Petrus Hispanus, printed with the same types which Lourens had used at Haarlem. Junius recollects that Nicolaus Gale, his tutor, a man of firm memory and venerable old age, had told him that as a boy he had often heard a certain bookbinder Cornells (a man of more than eighty years of age, who had been an under-workman in the same office) narrating the story of the invention (as he had heard it from his master), the polishing and increase of the crude art, &c., and cursing those nights which he had passed, during some months, with the culprit in one bed. The burgomaster Quirinus Talesius admitted to Junius that he had formerly heard nearly the same from the mouth of the same bookbinder. (XX) In 1628 Scriverius in his Laurecranz (see RR) placed the date of the Haarlem invention as far back as 1428, and mentioned as its inventor Lourens Janszoon, sheriff of Haarlem. He asserts that the art of printing appeared, “not in the manner as it is used now, with letters cast of lead and tin, but a book was cut leaf for leaf on wooden blocks,” and the Haarlem inventor was robbed in 1440 by Johan Gutenberg. Scriverius based the date 1428 upon a Hebrew Chronicle compiled by Joseph ben Meir (born 1496, d. c. 1575), and published in 1554 at Sabionetta by Cornelius Adelkind, where, under the year of the Jewish era 5188 ( = 1428), the author mentions a book (without giving the title) printed at Venice and seen by him. Scriverius, being convinced that this could only refer to a book printed at Haarlem, applied the entry to a xylographic Biblia Pauperum, of which he gave a description, together with several other block-books and early printed books.
(YY) In 1639 Boxhorn pushed the date of the Haarlem invention back to 1420, referring, as his authority, to the same Chronicle of Rabbi Joseph. Since that time the date of the Haarlem invention has been variously placed between 1420 and 1430.
Later testimonies are mere repetitions of earlier statements. We need not say much about the story of Antonio Cambruzzi, who asserted that Pamfilo Castaldi invented printing at Feltre, in Italy, in 1456, and that Fausto Comes-burgo, who lived in his house in order to learn the Italian language, learned the art from him and brought it to Mainz; this story, however, has found so much credence that in 1868 a statue was erected at Feltre in honour of Castaldi. Nor need we speak of Kuttenberg in Bohemia, where John Gutenberg is asserted to have been born and to have found the art of printing. We may also pass over Johann Fust, later on called Faust (testimonies P, T, DD, FF, II, KK, LL, OO), as we know from the Mainz lawsuit of 1455 (A) that he had simply assisted Gutenberg with loans of money. We may also pass over Johann Mentelin of Strasburg (testimonies NN, PP), only remarking here that he had already printed a Bible in 1460, and that he is mentioned in Strasburg registers as a chrysographer or gold-writer from 1447 to 1450; but of his whereabouts between 1450 and 1460 there is no record. That he had gone, or had been called, after 1450 by Gutenberg to Mainz has been asserted but not proved, and there is no reason why he should not be one of the two Johannes alluded to as the prothocaragmatici of Mainz in the Justinian of 1468 (testimony I.). That Nicolas Jenson came to be regarded in certain circles and for a time as the inventor of printing is owing to testimony N being misunderstood. There remain, therefore, to be considered the testimonies which bear on the rival claims of Haarlem and Mainz. The controversy between Germany and Holland was publicly started as early as 1499 by the Cologne Chronicle (testimony BB), that between the two towns mentioned not publicly before 1561 (testimony RR); while no rival inventor to Gutenberg was mentioned publicly and in print earlier than 1588 (testimony VV).
Let us first consider the claims of Germany and Mainz as centred in the person of Henne ( = Hans or Johann) Gensfleisch, called Gutenberg or Gudenberg, the latter name derived from his mother, whose maiden name was Elsa Wyrich, who lived in the “Hof zum Gutenberg” at Mainz. He is supposed to have been born at that town about 1400. He is first mentioned in a Mainz document, dated 16th January 1430. In a document of 28th March 1430 he is spoken of as being “not in Mainz.” Documents from 14th March 1434 to 18th September 1444 prove him to have been at Strasburg during that time, and documents dated respectively 17th October 1448, 6th November 1455, 21st June 1457, 10th April 1461, show that he was in or near Mainz on those days. By a decree of 17th January 1465 the archbishop of that town rewarded him for “his services,” and in the bond of Dr Homery, dated 26th February 1468, he is spoken of as dead. There are, moreover, six forged documents (including some relics of an ancient press bearing the date 1441) respectively dated 24th March 1424, 1437, 3d July 1453, 20th July 1459, 19th June 1463, and an entry in an anniversarium which has been applied to Gutenberg, but does not concern him (see Hessels, Gutenberg).
In former years, when printing was believed to have been invented in 1440, the records of the Strasburg lawsuit of 1439, between Gutenberg and some Strasburg artisans about certain industrial undertakings (as the art of polishing stones, the manufacture of looking-glasses), were considered to prove the invention of printing at Strasburg, not, however, by Mentelin, as had been thought by some (testimonies NN, PP), but by Gutenberg. The records came to light about 1740, just when Schoepflin, the principal discoverer, had been commissioned to search for documents of this kind. Doubts may be suggested as to their genuineness, but they have all perished, partly during the revolution of 1793 and partly during the siege of Strasburg in 1870. However, nobody would now assert that printing was invented in 1439 or at Strasburg; and those who still believe that Gutenberg was the inventor of printing refer to them only as showing that he was a mechanic as early as 1439, and that he understood the art of pressing.
The first document that connects Gutenberg with the art of printing is the notarial instrument of 6th November 1455 (testimony A). But it says nothing of an invention or a new mode of printing. And yet the occasion was such as to make it almost imperative on Gutenberg to mention it, for he had spent 1600 guilders of Fust’s money, apparently without printing anything, and was on the point of being robbed by the latter and having taken away from him all that he had made and done to give effect to his idea or invention. In the next testimony (B), i.e., the earliest Mainz books with printed dates (1457 to 1467), there is evidence that the new art of printing is not only not kept secret but fully appreciated at Mainz, and its importance fully realized and advertised; but, though they speak of a “nova ars imprimendi” and an “adinventio imprimendi,” there is not a syllable as to a Mainz invention or inventor. In testimonies C and D (the Catholicon of 1460) there is again not one word about an invention or an inventor, or about Mainz. Yet Gutenberg is supposed to have printed the Catholicon; and it is incredible that he, who had been wronged and robbed by his two rivals (Fust and Schoeffer), should agree with them in explaining and proclaiming the new art, but never with one word assert his claim to the honour and profit of the invention, if he had made any, and should even omit his name, whereas he saw his two rivals never neglect to print their names in full on every book which they published. Those who believe that Gutenberg was the inventor of printing suggest that he kept silent, as otherwise his creditors would have seized his copies and his printing office. But this explanation cannot be accepted; for the verbose colophon at the end of a gigantic folio book like the Catholicon, published at a time when there were perhaps not more than three printing offices in the world, was calculated to draw attention to its printer and his residence, not to conceal him. Testimony F (1466) is no longer regarded as having any reference to Gutenberg or the invention of printing. H (1468) was formerly thought to mean: “I, the book, am cast (i.e., its types are cast) in the Mainz city, and the house whence the type came (=where the type was invented) produced me.” But of late years it has been shown that the author of the book, Johann Fons, was Peter Schoeffer’s press-corrector. And, as he no doubt resided in Schoeffer’s house, the two lines evidently mean: “I am a little book cast in Mainz, and I was born ( = written) in the same house whence the type comes ( = where I am printed).” Testimony I (also of 1468) speaks of two Johannes (Gutenberg and Fust) as the “prothocaragmatici librorum quos genuit urbs Moguntina.” But this certainly means, not that the first printers of books were born at Mainz, but that the two Johannes were the chief printers of books (born) produced at Mainz.
When we now place together the clear documentary testimonies (A to I) of the first fourteen years of printing (1454 to 1468) at Mainz, we see that they all come from Mainz itself. Everybody connected with the art speaks of it in the most public and unreserved manner; its importance is as fully realized and advertised during that period as it is in the present day; the German nation is even congratulated on possessing it; there is never any secrecy about it; once (about 1456) it is even called a new art. But, in the midst of all this publicity, the art which Mainz and Germany possess is never said to have been invented at Mainz. The supposed Mainz inventor (Gutenberg) even speaks himself on two occasions (in the lawsuit of 1455 and in the Catholicon of 1460), but never says that he had made an invention. The archbishop, too, speaks publicly of Gutenberg in 1465 (testimony E), and rewards him for services, but does not speak of him as the inventor of printing, nor even as a printer. Nor does Dr Homery, in his letter to the archbishop (testimony G), in which he refers to Gutenberg’s printing apparatus, call him the inventor of printing.
In 1468 we enter on a new phase in the history of the invention. Even if we reject testimony I as being merely local, testimony K (1468) speaks of the art of printing as having arisen in Germany. This testimony, however, does not come from Germany, nor from Mainz, but from Italy, and is supposed to owe its inspiration to the two German printers who had established a printing office at Subiaco in 1465, and in 1467 at Rome, and who most likely learned their craft at Mainz. But, as the two printers are mentioned in the testimony, and as it does not speak of Gutenberg, nor of Mainz, it is far more likely that it was merely derived from the colophons of Fust and Schoeffer, or from something that Cardinal Cusa had heard during his embassies in Germany. To the Mainz colophons we must also ascribe (a ) the two testimonies of 1470 (L) and (b ) the three of 1471 (M), all five of which come from France and Italy. At last, in 1472, we find in testimony O the invention of printing ascribed to Gutenberg of Mainz, but it is mentioned as a rumour, and comes from France. Guil. Fichet of Paris, who gives it, is supposed to have heard the rumour from the three German printers who commenced printing at Paris in 1470. But, as two of them had resided, immediately before they came to Paris, in the university of Basel, and are supposed to have learned their art there, the rumour is ascribed to “Bertolff von Hanauwe,” who appears in the lawsuit of 1455 as Gutenberg’s servant, and who was printing at Basel in 1468. Perhaps it came rather from information which Fichet obtained from the St Victor cathedral, near Mainz, as he speaks of the art having been invented not far from that town. Testimony P (1474) again comes from Italy, from Rome, and was perhaps derived from one of the German printers settled there at that time. It merely speaks of Gutenberg, Fust, and Mentelin as printers, but says not a word which even touches upon the invention of the art. In testimony Q (1476) we have definite mention of Mainz as the inventress of the art; it is given as an addition to the Mainz colophon of 1468 (see I). In 1478 Mainz is again mentioned in a Cologne testimony (R), which gives evidence of research, as it is an amplification of an earlier one in which Mainz was not mentioned. Germany, Gutenberg, and Mainz are again mentioned in the Venetian testimony S (1483), which gives for the first time 1440 as the date of the invention. In the same year we have two earlier testimonies (P and N) worked into one (T), to the effect that printing was invented either by Gutenberg or by Fust or by Jenson. Testimony V (1492), which states that printing commenced at Mainz, is practically equivalent to Q. In 1494 and 1499 we have three German testimonies (X, Y, Z) as to Gutenberg being the inventor of printing; these, however, come, not from Mainz, but from Heidelberg. Z is given by a relative of Gutenberg, Adam Gelthus; and, as the latter resided at Heidelberg, it is clear that he was the real source of the other two Heidelberg testimonies (X and Y). Two years later, when Wimpheling, the author of testimony Y, had left Heidelberg, he ascribed (CC) the invention of printing to Strasburg, though stating that Gutenberg was the inventor. Testimony AA is recorded above to show the great confusion that reigned in people’s minds about the invention. We must add to these testimonies those of 1504 (EE) and 1505 (FF), which are owing to Ivo Wittig, a relative of Gutenberg, and a canon and the keeper of the seals of the Str Victor cathedral, near Mainz, of which Gutenberg had been a lay member according to its liber fraternitatis. Thus in the period from 1468 to 1505 we have (1) several vague statements made in Italy and France as to the art of printing being known or practised or invented in Germany, statements which arose from the books and colophons published at Mainz; (2) one item of rumour in 1472 that Gutenberg invented it near that town; (3) two Mainz statements, of 1476 and 1492, and one Cologne statement, of 1478, that it was invented at Mainz; (4) three German statements, of 1492, 1494, and 1499, that Gutenberg had invented it; and (5) two Mainz statements, of 1504 and 1505, to the same effect. It is to be particularly noticed that the statements (2, 4, 5) which speak distinctly of Gutenberg being the inventor can be clearly traced to Gutenberg himself and two of his relatives.
Seeing then how slender the basis is for the tradition that printing was invented by Gutenberg at Mainz, and that even this slender basis was not laid till fourteen years after the art had been fully established and proclaimed in that city, we cannot be surprised to find the tradition promptly contradicted. This contradiction was made in 1499 (testimony BB) in a Chronicle published at Cologne. To facilitate the understanding of this testimony it is divided above into eight sections. The first (taken from Hartmann Schedel's Chronicle, 1493), second, sixth, seventh, and eighth are no doubt due to the compiler of the Chronicle, and must not be connected with the third, fourth, and fifth, which, according to the compiler, are due to Ulrich Zell, a printer at Cologne, who had probably settled there about 1463, and had most likely learned his art at Mainz, as he called himself “clericus Moguntinus.” As Zell’s testimony leaves to Gutenberg nothing but the honour of having perfected the art, various attempts have been made to explain away this account. As long as no typographically printed Donatus had been found that could be fitted into Zell’s account, it was argued that he meant Donatuses printed from wooden blocks; and this argument is brought forward even at the present time. But a practical printer like Zell must have been able to express himself to that effect if he had really meant to say so; and, as block-printing was not less practised in Germany than in Holland, we could hardly assume that things printed in Holland would have inspired the German inventor rather than the same things printed in Germany. That testimony OO speaks of a Donatus printed from wooden blocks may be ascribed to the notion arising at that time (c. 1533) that block-printing had given rise to typography. It has also been asserted that Holland in the Chronicle means Flanders; but the Chronicle is usually very correct in geographical matters. It has also been suggested that Zell most likely learned his art in Fust and Schoeffer’s office and invented the passage to injure the reputation of Gutenberg, who had been their enemy. Finally it has been said that Zell did not suggest or write the passage at all; but it is hard to see how this can be maintained in face of the compiler’s own statement to that effect. Therefore, all these suggestions failing to weaken Zell’s testimony, we must see how far it can be brought into harmony with other circumstances and the testimonies MM, RR, SS, TT, VV, XX, YY, which claim the honour of the invention for Haarlem in Holland. Testimonies RR and SS do not mention the name of the inventor. But the former is a mere introduction destined for a complete book that was lost during the siege of Haarlem in 1573 before it was printed; we are, therefore, not entitled to say that Van Zuren did not know the name. SS may have omitted the name, because the publication of Van Zuren’s work was in contemplation at the time that it was written. That Guicciardini (testimony TT) in 1566 did not mention the name of the reputed Haarlem inventor cannot be considered as an indication that it was not known or had not yet been “invented” when he wrote, as his accounts of the cities of the northern Netherlands are all very meagre and were for the most part derived from correspondence. In Junius’s account (VV), however, we find every particular that could be desired. He begins by referring to the difficulty of vindicating the honour of the invention for Haarlem on account of the deep-rooted and general opinion that it took place at Mainz. He then mentions that Lourens (son of Jan) surnamed Coster resided at Haarlem “more than 128 years ago” and gives us to understand that in the year indicated by that phrase he invented the art of printing. As Junius’s book was not published till after his death, in 1588, and the two prefaces in it are dated 1575 (he died 16th June 1575), the number 128 is supposed to go back from the date when he actually wrote his account, which he is calculated to have done about 1568. Thus we get the year 1440 as the supposed date of the Haarlem invention, though, if we based our calculation upon the date of the preface, the year 1446 or 1447 would have to be assumed. But, as Junius adds that Coster’s types were stolen by one of his servants, who fled with them to Mainz, and establishing there a printing office printed within a year’s time, in 1442, two books, he must, if this latter date is correct, have meant 1440. By testimonies XX and YY we see that in the 17th century the date of the Haarlem invention was first put back as far as 1428, then to 1423; and since then it has usually been regarded as 1423, especially after it was discovered that the Haarlem wood where Coster is said to have cut his wooden letters was destroyed during a siege in 1426.
The researches as regards the reputed Haarlem inventor have hitherto not been made in a manner adequate for scientific purposes. It would appear that by the pushing back of the date of the invention, in spite of Junius, to 1420-1428, two inhabitants of Haarlem have been mixed up by the Dutch authors on the subject. (1) Lourens Janszoon, who never bore the surname Coster, and whose existence seems to be authenticated by documents from 1404 to 1439, was sheriff, and a wine merchant and innkeeper, and is supposed to have died in 1439. About 1870, however, researches brought to light that there had been (2) a Lourens Janszoon Coster at Haarlem, duly authenticated by genuine official documents as a chandler and innkeeper, from 1436 to 1483, who went away from Haarlem in the latter year. The name of this man and some genealogical particulars known of him fit into the story of Junius, though there are certain particulars in Junius’s account which cannot yet be properly explained.
Junius bases his account of the Haarlem invention on three books, a Dutch edition of the Speculum Humanae Salvationis, the Doctrinale, and the Tracts of Petrus Hispanus (Pope John XXI.). The first work, he said, was printed by Coster himself as a first specimen of his art, and it would seem from his words that he considered the work to be printed with wooden types. The two Dutch editions of the Speculum, however, were printed, like the two Latin editions of the same work, with movable metal type, though in one of the Latin editions there are twenty leaves the text of which is printed apparently from wooden blocks. The Doctrinale and the Tracts of Hispanus were printed, Junius says, at Mainz by Coster’s workman with the types which he had stolen from Coster. Of the Hispanus Tracts no edition has yet come to light that would answer to Junius’s description. But of the Doctrinale we have four editions, all printed in the same type (i. ) as the four editions of the Speculum. With these same types are printed no less than six editions of the short Latin grammar of Aelius Donatus; and editions of this school-book printed in Holland were, according to Zell in the Cologne Chronicle, the models for the printing at Mainz, which commenced about 1450. As there are no other editions of Donatus printed in Holland that could be placed before the year 1450, the claims of Haarlem and Holland are based on them; and we will, therefore, briefly describe the types and books which must be connected with the Specula, Doctrinalia, and Donatuses just mentioned. In one of the editions of the Speculum in Dutch occur two leaves printed in a different type (ii. ) from the rest of the work. This type is in its turn so very much like another type with which a work of Laur. Valla (Facetiae Morales) is printed that we link it (iii. ) on to the two just mentioned. Then again type iii. is, in some of its capitals, identical with a type (iv. ) used for a work of Ludovicus de Roma, Singularia Juris, at the end of which, on the last leaf, commences another work, printed in a different type (v. ). Type vi. is identical with type v., except in its capital P, which is larger. We have also works printed in two different types (vii., viii.) which both show such a great family likeness to each other and to types i. to vi. that it would not be advisable to separate them without evidence that they do not belong to the same office. With these eight types, which we cannot at present separate, fortyseven different books were printed, so far as we know at present. In type i.:—four editions (two in Latin, two in Dutch) of the Speculum Humanae Salvationis, a work which consists of woodcuts with explanatory text underneath; a Dutch version of The Seven Penitential Psalms; one Donatus of 27 lines; two editions of Donatus of 28 lines; a Liturgical Book in 16mo; three editions of Donatus of 30 lines; one Donatus, in French, of 29 and 30 lines on a page; four editions of Doctrinale of 32 lines; one Catonis Disticha of 21 lines. In type ii.:—two leaves only (49 and 60) of one of the Dutch editions of the Speculum. In type iii.—Laurentius Valla, Facetiae Morales, &c. In type iv. :—four editions of Donatus of 24 lines; Lud. (Pontanus) de Roma, Singularia Juris; Lud. (Pontanus) de Roma (?), Treatise on Canonical Law (?). In type v.:—Pius II., Tractatus et Epitaphia (printed at the end of the Singularia Juris) ; Guil. de Saliceto, De Salute Corporis ; one Donatus of 26 lines; five editions of Donatus of 27 lines; one Doctrinale of 26 lines; one Doctrinale of 28 lines; one Doctrinale of 29 lines; one Doctrinale of 32 lines; Catonis Disticha; Guil. de Saliceto, De Salute Corporis, together with Turrecremata, De Salute Animae; Pius II., Tractatus de Amore, &c.; Pindar of Thebes, Iliados Homericae Epitome, cum Praefatione Pii II.; another edition of the same work. In type vi. :—one Donatus of 26 lines; one Donatus of 27 lines. In type vii. :—one Donatus of 27 lines. In type viii.: —an Abecedarium of two leaves and a Donatus of 31 lines.
Type v. must have been in existence before 13th September 1474, as there is evidence that a copy of the Saliceto, printed in that type, was bought for the monastery of St James at Lille by its abbot Conrad du Moulin, who filled that office from the end of 1471 to 13th September 1474. As a work in this type (the Tracts and Epitaphs of Pius II.) is printed at the end of the Singularia Juris in type iv., we may assume that this type existed a considerable time before type v. As the books printed in types iv. and v. show greater progress in style and workmanship than the books printed in types i. to iii., we must assign the latter to an earlier period than the former. There is indeed positive evidence that type i. must have existed a considerable time before the end of 1473, as fragments of a Donatus printed in that type were used by a bookbinder at Haarlem to strengthen the binding of an account-book of the cathedral church in that town for the year 1474. From these facts alone we may safely assume that none of the forty-seven books can be dated after 1474, or, if any, only a few in types v. and vii. On the other hand, four of the works in type v. cannot be dated before 1458, as they bear the name of Pius II., who was not elected pope till that year. When we consider that there are twenty different editions of the Donatus printed in these types, and place an interval of about eighteen months between the successive editions, we get a period of some thirty years from about 1445 to 1474 for the issue of the twenty editions. That we reach the year 1445 by such a calculation is purely accidental; but there is evidence that in 1446 and 1451 printed Doctrinalia were bought at Bruges and Valenciennes by Jean Le Robert, the abbot of Cambray, according to two entries in his diary, preserved in the archives at Lille. And, as we know positively that there was no printing done at Mainz before 1454, nor anywhere else so early, we can only apply these entries to the Doctrinalia printed in Holland in the same types as the four editions of the Speculum (on which Junius based the tradition of the Haarlem invention), and six editions of the Donatus, which we may fit into Zell’s account. That the editions of the Speculum, of the Donatus, and of the Doctrinale in type i. may be dated as early as 1445-1454 is clear when we compare them with the earliest products of Mainz printing, for which the Donatuses, according to the Cologne Chronicle, served as models. For instance, no difference in workmanship can be detected between the Donatuses printed in Holland and the three editions of Donatus in the 36-line Bible type and the four editions of the same in the 42-line Bible type, all seven presumably printed at Mainz and before 1456. Nor is the workmanship of the Specula (in type i.) or of the Facetiae Morales (in type iii. ) different from or later than that of the Mainz Catholicon of 1460.
It has been pointed out above that the first products of the art of printing were not meant to be anything but faithful imitations of manuscript books, and that no material deviations from the general plan become observable till about 1473-1477. Nowhere is the plan of the MS. period more strictly adhered to than in the forty-seven books of which we are speaking. They are all without signatures, without initial directors, without hyphens, without catchwords, that is to say, without any of those characteristics which we see gradually, one after the other, come into almost general use from 1473 (if not earlier) to 1480. The four editions of the Speculum are all entirely printed anopisthographically, the woodcuts at the top of the pages as well as the explanatory text (in type i.) underneath, which would hardly be the case if the books had been printed after 1471, when the printing of woodcuts, together with text in movable types, had already been known for eleven years. Their types have nothing in common with any of those used in the Netherlands after 1473, but remind us in every respect of the earlier period of the Dutch block-books and MSS. They are all, so far as we know, without any colophon (except such a word as explicit), which would, for a collection of forty-seven books, be incompatible with a period after 1471, but not with the earlier period of the block-books and MSS. Moreover, out of the forty-seven books no less than thirty-five are printed on vellum, which is incompatible with a period after 1471, when printing on paper had become universal, but not with the earlier period of the MSS.
There is, therefore, no reason whatever to discredit Zell’s statement in the Cologne Chronicle of 1499, that the Donatuses printed in Holland were the models, the “beginning” of the art of printing, at Mainz, nor that of Hadrianus Junius in his Batavia, that printing was invented at Haarlem by Lourens Janszoon Coster. The two statements were made independently of each other. That of Zell must be regarded as a direct contradiction of the vague rumours and statements about an invention of printing at Mainz in Germany by Gutenberg, which gradually crept into print in and after 1468 in Italy and France, and which found their way into Germany about 1476, after Mainz and Germany had given the greatest publicity to the existence of the art in their midst for more than twenty-two years, but had been silent about an invention and an inventor. And, though Zell accords to Mainz the honour of having improved the art and having made it more artistic, he denies it the honour of having invented or begun it, and this latter honour was never claimed by that town before 1476. Junius’s account is the embodiment of a local tradition at Haarlem, the first written traces of which we have in a pedigree (testimony MM) of the family of the reputed Haarlem inventor, which must have existed at least as early as 1520. His account has been indirectly confirmed by the finding of several fragments at Haarlem, all belonging to the groups of books mentioned above, but still more by the discovery of several fragments of the Donatuses printed in the Speculum type, all used as binder’s waste by Cornelis, the bookbinder, the very man whom Junius alleges to have been the servant of Coster. As the case stands at present, therefore, we have no choice but to say that the invention of printing with movable metal types took place at Haarlem about the year 1445 by Lourens Janszoon Coster.
Early Types and their Fabrication.
We must now take notice of two theories or traditions which have been current for a long time as to some intervening stage between the art of block-printing and the art of printing with movable cast types. One theory or tradition would have it that the inventor of printing, after the idea of single, individual, movable types had arisen in his mind, practised his new invention for some considerable time with wooden types, and that he came only gradually to the idea of movable types cast of metal.
Junius gives us to understand that in his opinion the Dutch Speculum was printed with such wooden types. Of Johann Gutenberg it was asserted that he printed his first Bible with wooden types. The Mainz psalter, printed in 1457 by Joh. Fust and Peter Schoeffer, was alleged to have been printed with wooden types, in which case the 4th edition, published in 1502, and even the 5th edition of 1516, would be printed with wooden types, the same being used for them as for the editions of 1457 and 1459. Theod. Bibliander was the first to speak (in 1548) of such types and to describe them: first they cut their letters, he says, on wood-blocks the size of an entire page; but, because the labour and cost of that way was so great, they devised movable wooden types, perforated and joined one to the other by a thread. Bibliander does not say that he had ever seen such types himself, but Dan. Speckle or Specklin (died 1589), who ascribed the invention to Mentelin, asserts that he saw some of these wooden types at Strasburg. Angelo
Roccha asserted in 1591 that he had seen at Venice types perforated and joined one to the other by a thread, but he does not say whether they were of wood or of metal. In 1710 Paulus Pater asserted that he had seen wooden types made of the trunk of a box-tree, and perforated in the centre to enable them to be joined together by a thread, originating from the office of Fust at Mainz. Bodman, as late as 1781, saw the same types in a worm-eaten condition at Mainz; and Fischer stated in 1802 that these relics were used as a sort of token of honour to be bestowed on worthy apprentices on the occasion of their finishing their term.
Besides those who believed in these wooden types from the fact that the letters (especially in the Speculum) vary among themselves in a manner which would not be the case had they been cast from a matrix in a mould, there were authors and practical printers who attempted to cut themselves or to have cut for them some such wooden types as were alleged to have been used by the early printers. Some of them came to the conclusion that such a process would be quite practicable; others found by experiment that it would, in the case of small types, be wholly impossible. Up to the present time no book or document has come to light which can be asserted to have been printed with such single, movable, wooden types. But nearly all the experiments to which we have alluded were made with the idea that the inventor of printing, or the earliest printers, started, or had to start, with as large a supply of type as a modern printer. This idea is erroneous, as it is hardly any longer denied that, for a good many years after the first appearance of the art, printers printed their books (large or small) not by quires (quaternions or quinternions) but page by page. Therefore, all considerations of the experimenters as to the impracticability of such wooden types, on account of the trouble and length of time required for the cutting of thousands of types, fall to the ground in face of the fact that the earliest printers required only a very small quantity of type, in spite of the peculiar forms (combined letters, letters with contractions, &c.) which were then in vogue.
The other theory would have it that between blockprinting and printing with movable cast types there was an intermediate stage of printing with “sculpto-fusi” types, that is, types of which the shanks had been cast in a quadrilateral mould, and the “faces,” i.e., the characters or letters, engraved by hand afterwards. This theory was suggested by some who could not believe in wooden types and yet wished to account for the marked irregularities in the types of the earliest printed books.
Gerardus Meerman, the chief champion of this theory, based it, not only on the words of Celtes (Amores, iii. 3), who in 1502 described Mainz as the city “quae prima sculpsit solidos aere characteres,” but on the frequent recurrence of the word sculptus in the colophons of the early printers (for Jenson and Husner of Strasburg, see p. 681 above). Sensenschmid in 1475 said that the Codex Justinianus was “cut” (insculptus), and that he had “cut" (sculpsit) the work of Lombardus, In Psalterium. Meerman also explained the account of the invention of printing by Trithemius as meaning that, after the rejection of the first wooden types, the inventors discovered a method of casting the bodies only of all the letters of the Latin alphabet from what they called matrices, on which they cut the face of each letter; and from the same kind of matrices a method was in time discovered of casting the complete letters of sufficient hardness for the pressure they had to bear, which letters they were before—that is, when the bodies only were cast—obliged to cut. In this way Meerman explained that the Speculum was printed in sculpto-fusi types, although in the one page of which he gives a facsimile there are nearly 1700 separate types, of which 250 alone are e’s. Schoepflin claimed the same invention for Strasburg, and believed that all the earliest books printed there were produced by this means. Both Meerman and Schoepflin agreed that engraved metal types (literae in aere sculptae) were in use for many years after the invention of the punch and matrix, mentioning among others so printed the Mainz psalter, the Catholicon of 1460, the Eggestein Bible of 1468, and even the Praeceptorium of Nider, printed at Strasburg in 1476. But the great difficulty connected with the process of first casting the shanks and afterwards engraving the faces of the types has become apparent to those who have made experiments; and it seems more probable that the terms sculpere, exsculpere, insculpere are only a figurative allusion to the first process towards producing the types, namely, the cutting of the punch, which is artistically more important to the fabrication of types than the mechanical casting,—all the more as Schoeffer in 1468 makes his Grammatica Vetus Rhythmica say, “I am cast at Mainz,” an expression which could hardly be anything but a figurative allusion to the casting of the types.
Granting that all the earlier works of typography preserved to us are impressions of cast-metal types, there are still differences of opinion, especially among practical printers, as to the probable methods employed to cast them. It is considered unlikely that the inventor of printing passed all at once to the perfect typography of the punch, the matrix, and the mould. Bernard considered that the types of the Speculum were cast in sand, as that art was certainly known to the silversmiths and trinket-makers of the 15th century; and he accounts for the varieties observable in the shapes of various letters on the ground that several models would probably be made of each letter, and that the types, when cast by this imperfect mode, would require some touching up or finishing by hand. He exhibits a specimen of a word cast for him by this process which not only proves the possibility of casting types in this manner but also shows the same kind of irregularities as those observable in the types of the Speculum.
But here again it is argued that in types cast by this or any other primitive method there would be an absence of uniformity in what founders term “height to paper.” Some types would stand higher than others, and the low ones, unless raised, would miss the ink and not appear in the impression. The comparative rarity of faults of this kind in the Speculum leads one to suppose that, if a process of sand-casting had been adopted, the difficulty of uneven heights had been surmounted either by locking up the forme face downwards, or by perforating the types either at the time of casting or afterwards, and holding them in their places by means of a thread or wire. To this cause Ottley attributed the numerous misprints in the Speculum, to correct which would have involved the unthreading of every line in which an error occurred. And, as a still more striking proof that the lines were put into the forme one by one, in a piece, he shows a curious printer’s blunder at the end of one page, where the whole of the last reference-line is put in upside down, thus :—
JQoe ijuaø beøpot ølapenbe ettoe niεt ijιtεtετttιe.
*pjldE3 il 0103U3®
A “turn” of this magnitude could hardly have occurred if the letters had been set in the forme type by type.
Another suggested mode is that of casting in clay moulds, by a method very similar to that used in the sand process, and resulting in similar peculiarities and variations in the types.
Ottley, who was the chief exponent of this theory, suggested that the types were made by pouring melted lead or other soft metal into moulds of earth or plaster, after the ordinary manner used from time immemorial in casting statues of bronze and other articles of metal. But the mould thus formed could hardly avail for a second casting, as it would be scarcely possible to extract the type after casting without breaking the clay, and, even if that could be done, the shrinking of the metal in cooling would be apt to warp the mould beyond the possibility of further use. Ottley therefore suggests that the constant renewal of the moulds could be effected by using old types cast out of them, after being touched up by the graver, as models,—a process which he thinks will account for the varieties observable in the different letters, but which would really cause such a gradual deterioration and attenuation in the type, as the work of casting progressed, that in the end it would leave the face of the letter unrecognizable as that with which it began. It would therefore be more reasonable to suppose that one set of models would be used for the preparation of all the moulds necessary for the casting of a sufficient number of types to compose a page, and for the periodical renewal of the moulds all through the work, and that the variations in the types would be due, not to the gradual paring of the faces of the models, but to the different skill and exactness with which the successive moulds would be taken. It is evident that the sand and clay methods of casting types above described must be slow. The time occupied after the first engraving of the models in forming, drying, and clearing the moulds, in casting, extracting, touching up, and possibly perforating the types required for one page, would exceed the time required by a practised xylographer for the cutting of a page of text upon a block. But he that has gone through the trouble of casting separate movable types has a clear gain over the woodblock printer in having a fount of movable types, which, even if the metal in which they were cast were only soft lead or pewter, might be used again and again in the production of any other page of text, while the wood-block can only produce the one page which it contains. Moreover, only one hand could labour on the xylographic block; but many hands could be employed in the moulding and casting of types, however rude they might be. Bernard states that the artist who produced for him the few sand-cast types shown in his work assured him that a workman could easily produce a thousand such letters a day. He also states that, though each letter required squaring after casting, there was no need to touch up the faces.
There remains yet another suggestion as to the method in which the types of the rude school may have been produced. This may be described as a system of what the founders of sixty years ago called polytype, which is a cast or facsimile copy of an engraved block, matter in type, &c.
Lambinet, who is responsible for the suggestion, based upon a new translation of Trithemius’s narrative, explains that this process really means an early adoption of stereotype. He thinks that the first printers may have discovered a way of moulding a page of some work—an Abecedarium— in cooling metal, so as to get a matrixplate impression of the whole page. Upon this matrix they would pour a liquid metal, and by the aid of a roller or cylinder press the fused matter evenly, so as to make it penetrate into all the hollows and corners of the letters. This tablet of tin or lead, being easily lifted and detached from the matrix, would then appear as a surface of metal in which the letters of the alphabet stood out reversed and in relief. These letters could easily be detached and rendered mobile by a knife or other sharp instrument, and the operation could be repeated a hundred times a day. The metal faces so produced would be fixed on wooden shanks, type high, and the fount would then be complete. Lambinet's hypothesis was endorsed by Firmin-Didot, the renowned type-founder and printer of Lambinet’s day. But it is impossible to suppose that the Mainz psalter of 1457, which these writers point to as a specimen of this mode of execution, is the impression, not of type at all, but of a collection of “casts” mounted on wood.
Whatever value there may be in the above theories with regard to the movable types of the first printer, certain it is that the shape and manufacture of the types used as early as c. 1470 do not seem to have differed materially from those of the present types.
This is evident (1) from the shape of the old types which were discovered in 1878 in the bed of the river Saône, near Lyons, opposite the site of one of the 15th-century printing houses of that city, and which there is reason to believe belonged once to one of those presses, and were used by the early printers of Lyons; (2) from a page in Joh. Nider’s Lepra Moralis, printed by Conrad Homburch at Cologne in 1476, which shows the accidental impression of a type, pulled up from its place in the course of printing by the ink-ball, and laid at length upon the face of the forme, thus leaving its exact profile indented upon the page; (3) from an entirely similar page (fol. 4 b ) in Liber de Laudibus ac Festis Gloriosae Virginis, Cologne, c. 1468. From the small circle appearing in the two last-mentioned types, it is presumed that the letters were pierced laterally by a circular hole, which did not penetrate the whole thickness of the letter, and served, like the nick of modern types, to enable the compositor to tell by touch which way to set the letter in his stick. The fact that in these two cases the letter was pulled up from the forme seems to show that the line could not have been threaded.
Vinc. Fineschi, Notizie Storiche sopra la Stamperia di Ripoli (Florence, 1781, p. 49), gives an extract from the cost-book of the Ripoli press, about 1480, by which it appears that steel, brass, copper, tin, lead, and iron wire were all used in the manufacture of types at that period.
The history and nomenclature of the earliest types are practically a continuation of the history and nomenclature of the characters figured in the earliest block-books, woodengravings, and MSS. For instance, Gothic type was first seen about the year 1445; but it should not be forgotten that the Gothic writing, of which that type was an imitation, was already known and used about the second half of the 12th century. Again, the pure Roman type, which appeared about 1464, is nothing but an imitation of what in palaeography is called the Caroline minuscule, a handwriting which was already fully developed towards the end of the 8th century. Consequently, details as to the history and development of the various types properly belong to the study of Palaeography (q.v.).
The broad outlines of the history of the earliest types are as follows :—
Gothic type, of the angular or pointed kind, was first used by the Haarlem printer of the Speculum, Bonatus, &c. (see specimen No. 1, taken from the British Museum copy of the Speculum Humanae Salvationis, mixed Latin edition), presumably c . 1445. An entirely similar but larger type (No. 2, taken from the British Museum copy of Ludovicus [Pontanus] de Roma, Singularia) was used, presumably by the same printer, c . 1465-1470. Gothic type appeared in Germany as a church type in 1454, in the 31-line indulgence, presumably printed by Johan Gutenberg at Mainz (No. 3, from the Gottingen copy), and in the 30-line indulgence (No. 4, taken from the British Museum copy), printed by Peter Schoeffer at Mainz. Type No. 3 was also used about the same time for the 36-line Bible and type No. 4 for the 42-line Bible. Two much larger Gothic types appeared in the psalter of 1457, published by Fust and Schoeffer (see Bernard, Origine, pl. vii.). In Italy Gothic type appears in 1468 (No. 5, taken from the British Museum copy of Cicero, Be Oratore published at Rome by Ulr. Hahn, 15th December
1468, in small Roman type, with imprint in Gothic), but in a more rounded form; it is practically the ordinary Italian writing influenced by the Gothic. In France Gothic began to be used in 1473; in England it appears first in Caxton’s type about the year 1480. It was employed extensively in a great many of the earliest presses all over Europe, and continued to be used largely at all times, especially for Bibles, law books, royal proclamations, &c., and even to this day it is the national character of Germany. It is now usually called lettre de forme, black letter or English in English-speaking countries, lettre Flamand in Holland, and fractur in Germany.
Bastard Italian or bastard Roman was introduced in 1454 at Mainz in the 31-line (No. 6) and 30-line (No. 7) indulgence. It is also called lettre de somme, some think from the Summa of Thomas Aquinas, printed in the type of the Bible of 1462 by Fust and Schoeffer. Varieties of this kind of type were, like the Gothic, much used by the earliest printers, as, for instance, the printer of the 1460 Catholicon, i.e., by Mentelin of Strasburg, c. 1460, and by Ulrich Zell at Cologne, c . 1466, &c. In England it appeared in the first three books printed (1478, 1479) at Oxford (No. 8, taken from the British Museum copy of Jerome’s Expositio in Simbolum Apostolorum, wrongly dated 1468 for 1478).
Roman type, the Caroline minuscule of palaeography, was first used in Germany about 1464, at Strasburg, by the printer whose fount of type is known by a peculiarly shaped R, and who on that account is usually called “the R printer” (No. 9, taken from the British Museum copy of Durandus, Rationale, of which the Basel library possesses a copy which was bought in 1464). In Italy it appears in 1465 at Subiaco (see Bernard, pl. xii., No. 19), at Rome in 1467 (op. cit., pl. xii., No. 20), but in all its purity at Venice in
1469, used by Johannes of Spires (op. cit., pl. xii, No. 23), and at Paris in 1470 (op. cit., pl. xiii., No. 25). In England it was not used before 1518, when Richard Pynson printed Pace’s Oratio in Pace Nuperrima (see facsimile in Reed’s Type Foundries, p. 92).
Burgundian type, or gros batarde or secretary, was first used about 1470-72 by Colard Mansion at Bruges (No. 10, taken from the British Museum copy of La Controversie de Noblesse, c. 1471-72). With a somewhat similar type (No. 11, taken from the British Museum copy of the Recuyell) William Caxton is presumed to have printed, likewise at Bruges, a set of five books, of which the Recuyell of the History of Troye, a translation of a work by Raoul le Fèvre, is the best known and was probably printed c. 1471. To this same class belong the first type (No. 12, from the British Museum copy of the Dictes) used in England by William Caxton for the printing of Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers (18th November 1477), and that used by the printer of St Albans (No. 13, taken from the Cambridge university library copy of Aug. Dactus, Elegande). It was an imitation of the manuscript hand of the English and Burgundian scribes of the 15th century, and, after having figured for a long time in several of the early London and provincial presses, was about 1534 entirely superseded by the English black letter. To this class of type belong also the later lettre de civilité (c. 1570), the script (lettre coulée, lettre de finance, Dutch geschreven schrift), set court, base secretary, and running secretary types.
On the types before 1500, consult also the facsimiles in Holtrop’s Mοn. Tyρ. des Pays-Bas, The Hague, 1868; R. C. Hawkins, First Books and Printers of the Fifteenth Century, New York, 1884; william Blades, The Life of Caxton, London, 1861-63; Bernard, O rigine de l’Imprimerie, Paris, 1853, vol. i., plates iii.-xiii.; Placidus Braun, Notitia de Libris ab Artis Typogr. Inventione usque ad Annum 1479 Impressis, Augsburg, 1788; H. Noel Humphreys, Hist. of the Art of Printing, fol., London, 1867. The types after 1500 can best be learned from the catalogues of type-founders, among which those of Messrs Enschedé of Haarlem occupy a foremost place. Of others we may mention— Indice dei Caratteri nella Stampa Vaticana, 4to, Rome, 1628; Épreuves des Caractères qui se trouvent chez Claude Lameste, 4to, Paris, 1742; Épreuves des Car. de la Fonderie de Claude Mozet, 8vo, Nantes, 1754; Les Car. de l’Imprimerie par Fournier le Jeune, 8vo, Paris, 1764: Proef van Letteren, Bloemen, &c., van Ploos van Amstel, 8vo, Amsterdam, 1767; Épreuve de Car. de Jacques François Rosart, 8vo, Brussels, 1771; Schriften . . . bey J. H. Prentzler, 4to, Frankfort-on-Main, 1774; Épreuves des Car. de la Fond. de J. L. Joannis, 8vo, Paris, 1776; Épreuves des Car. de la Fond. de J. L. de Boubers, 8vo, Brussels, 1777; Proeve van Letteren welke gegooten worden door J. de Groot, 8vo, The Hague, 1787; Pantographie, by Edmund Fry, 8vo, London, 1799; and Manuale Typographico, by G. Bodoni, 4to, Parma, 1818.
Subsequent to 1500.
Though the Cologne Chronicle of 1499 denies to Mainz the honour of the invention of the art of printing, it was right in asserting that, after it had been brought there from Holland, it became much more masterly and exact, and more and more artistic. During the first half century of printing a good many printers distinguished themselves by the beauty, excellence, and literary value of their productions. We may mention as such :—Johan Fust and Peter Schoeffer at Mainz; Johan Mentelin and Heinrich Eggestein at Strasburg; Ulrich Zell at Cologne; Sweyn-heym and Pannarts at Subiaco and at Rome; Nicolas Jenson at Venice; Anton Koberger at Nuremberg; Ketelaer and De Leempt at Utrecht; Johan Veldener at Louvain, Utrecht, and Kuilenburg; Gerard Leeu at Gouda; Johan of Westphalia at Louvain; and William Caxton ( q.v.) at Westminster.
Very soon the demand for books increased, and with it came a reduction in their prices. This caused a decline in the execution of printing, which begins to be appreciable about 1480 in some localities, and may be said to have become general towards the end of the 15th century. At all times, however, we find some printers raise their art to a great height by the beauty of their types and the literary excellence of their productions. Among the later printers we may mention the Aldi of Venice (1490 to 1597; see Manutius, vol. XV. p. 512); G. B. Bodoni of Parma (1768- 1813; see vol. iii. p. 849); John Amerbach at Basel (1492- 1516); John Froben at Basel (1496-1527; see vol. ix. p. 791); John Baskerville at Birmingham (1750-1775; see vol. iii. p. 421); the house of Wechel, first at Paris (c. 1530-1572), afterwards at Frankfort; Christopher Plantin at Antwerp (1554-1589), but continued long after under the firm Officina Plantiniana (see vol. xix. p. 176); the Elzevirs, first at Leyden, afterwards at Amsterdam (1580- 1680; see vol. viii. p. 156); Antoine Verard at Paris (1485-1513); Josse Bade at Paris (1495-1535; see Badius, vol. iii. p. 228); and the Estiennes at Paris (1502-1598; see Stephens, vol. xxii. p. 534).
History of Modern Types.
The Italic type is said to be an imitation of the handwriting of Petrarch, and was introduced by Aldus Manutius of Venice for the purpose of printing his projected small editions of the classics. The cutting of it was entrusted to Francesco da Bologna, an artist who is presumed to be identical with the painter Francesco Francia or Raibolini. The fount is a “lower case” only, the capitals being Roman in form. It contains a large number of tied letters, to imitate handwriting, but is quite free from contractions and ligatures. It was first used in the Virgil of 1500. Aldus produced six different sizes between 1501 and 1558. It was counterfeited almost immediately in Italy, at Lyons, and elsewhere. Originally it was called Venetian or Aldine, but subsequently Italic type, except in Germany and Holland, where it is called “cursive.” The Italians also adopted the Latin name “characteres cursivi seu cancellarii.” In England it was first used by Wynkyn de Worde in Wakefield’s Oratio in 1524. The character was at first intended and used for the entire text of classical works. When it became more general, it was employed to distinguish portions of a book not properly belonging to the work, such as introductions, prefaces, indexes, notes, the text itself being in Roman. Later it was used in the text for quotations, and finally served the double part of emphasizing certain words in some works, and in others, chiefly translations of the Bible, of marking words not rightly forming a part of the text.
Greek type (minuscules) first occurs in Cicero, De Officiis printed at Mainz in 1465 by Fust and Schoeffer. The fount used is rude and imperfect, many of the letter’s being ordinary Latin. In the same year Sweynheym and Pannarts used a good Greek letter for some of the quotations in their edition of Laetantius (see, for instance, leaves 11a, 19a, 36a, 139, 140); but the supply was evidently short at first, as some of the larger quotations in the first part of the book were left blank to be filled in by hand. The first book wholly printed in Greek minuscules was the Grammar of Lascaris, by Paravisinus, at Milan in 1476, in types stated to have been cut and cast by Demetrius of Crete. The fount contains breathings, accents, and some ligatures. The headings to the chapters are wholly in capitals. The Anthologia Graeca of Lascaris was printed at Florence in 1494 wholly in Greek capitals (litterae majusculae), and it is stated in the preface that they were designed after the genuine models of antiquity to be found in the inscriptions on medals, marbles, &c. But as late as 1493 Greek type was not common, for in that year the Venice printer Symon Bevilaqua issued Tibullus, Catullus, and Propertius with blanks left in the commentary for the Greek quotations. In England Greek letters appeared for the first time in 1519 in W. de Worde’s edition of Whitenton’s Grammatica, where a few words are introduced cut in wood. Cast types were used at Cambridge in Galen’s De Temperamentis, translated by Linacre, and printed by Siberch in 1521, who styles himself the first Greek printer in England; but the quotations in the Galen are very sparse, and Siberch is not known to have printed any entire book in Greek. The first printer who possessed Greek types in any quantity was Reginald Wolfe, who held a royal patent as printer in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and printed in 1543 two Homilies of Chrysostom, edited by Sir John Cheke, the first Greek lecturer at Cambridge. In Edinburgh, in 1563, and as late as 1579, the space for Greek words was left blank in printing, to be filled in by hand. In 1632 Cambridge applied to Oxford for the loan of a Greek fount to print a Greek Testament, and the same university made an offer in 1700 for the purchase of a fount of the king’s Greek at Paris, but withdrew on the French Academy insisting as a condition that every work printed should bear the imprint “characteribus Graecis e typographeo regio Parisiensi.” It should not be forgotten that the large number of ligatures in the Greek of that day made the production of a fount a serious business. The Oxford Augustin Greek comprised no fewer than 354 matrices, the great primer 456, and even one fount showed 776 different sorts. The Dutch founders effected a gradual reduction of the Greek typographical ligatures. Early in the 19th century a new fashion of Greek, for which Porson was sponsor and furnished the drawings, was introduced, and has remained the prevailing form to this day.
The first Hebrew types are generally supposed to have appeared in 1475 in Petras Niger’s Tractatus contra Perfidos Judaeos (leaf 10), printed by Conrad Fyner at Esslingen. De Rossi states that a Hebrew work in four folio volumes entitled Arba Turim of Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, was printed in 1475 at Pieve di Sacco in Austrian Italy, while in the same year, a few months earlier, Salomon Jarchi’s Comment. on the Pentateuch appeared at Reggio in Italy, printed in the Rabbinical character. Numerous other Hebrew works followed before 1488, in which year the first entire Hebrew Bible was printed, with points, at Soncino, by a family of German Jews. The first English book in which any quantity of Hebrew type was used was Dr Rhys’s Cambro-Brytannicae Cymraecaeve Linguae Institutiones, printed by Thomas Orwin in 1592, though already in 1524 Greek characters, but cut in wood, were used by W. de Worde in Wakefield’s Oratio. But the Hebrew fount made use of in Walton’s Polyglott in 1657 was probably the first important fount cut and cast in England, though there were as yet no matrices there for Rabbinical Hebrew. In the beginning of the 18th century Amsterdam was the centre of the best Hebrew printing in Europe.
The first book printed in Arabic types is said to be a Diurnale Graecorum Arabum, printed at Fano in Italy in 1514. Two years later P. P. Porras’s Polyglott Psalter, comprising the Arabic version, was printed at Genoa; and two years later a Koran in Arabic is said to have been printed at Venice. In 1505 an Arabic Vocabulary at Granada had the words printed in Gothic letters with the Arabic points placed over them; and in other presses where there were no Arabic types the language was expressed in Hebrew letters or cut in wood. De Guignes and others mention a fount of Arabic used by Gromors in Paris in 1539-40 to print Postel’s Grammar. In England some Arabic words were introduced in Wakefield’s Oratio of 1524, but apparently cut in wood. In Minsheu’s Ductor in Linguas, 1617, the Arabic words are printed in Italic character’s. Laud’s gift of Oriental MSS. to Oxford in 1635, and the appointment of an Arabic lecturer, were the first real incentives to the cultivation of the language by English scholars. Previous to this it is stated that the Raphelengius Arabic press at Leyden had been purchased by the English Orientalist, William Bedwell; but, if it was brought to England, it does not appear to have been immediately made use of. The Arabic words in Thomas Greave’s Oratio de Linguae Arabicae Utilitate, printed at Oxford in 1639, were written in by hand.
Syriac type, probably cut in wood, first appeared in Postel’s Linguarum XII. Alphabeta, printed in Paris in 1538; but the characters are so rude in form and execution as to be scarcely legible. In 1555, however, Postel assisted in cutting the punches for the Syriac Peshito New Testament, printed at Vienna in 4to, the first portion of the Scriptures, and apparently the first book, printed in that language. In 1569-72 Plantin at Antwerp included the Syriac New Testament in his Polyglott, and reissued it in a separate form in 1574. In England Syriac was usually expressed in the earlier works in Hebrew characters. But in 1652, when the prospectus and preliminary specimen of Walton’s Polyglott were issued, we find Syriac type in use.
Of the Armenian character the press of the Vatican possessed a good fount in 1591, when Angelo Roccha showed a specimen in his Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana. A psalter is said to have been printed at Rome in 1565, and Rowe Mores mentions doubtfully a liturgy printed at Cracow in 1549. Armenian printing was practised in Paris in 1633; but the Armenian bishops, on applying to France for assistance in printing an Armenian Bible in 1662, were refused, and went to Rome, where, as early as 1636, the press of the Propaganda had published a specimen of its Armenian matrices. The patriarch, after fifteen months’ residence in Rome, removed to Amsterdam, where he established an Armenian press, and printed the Bible in 1666, which was followed in 1668 by a separate edition of the New Testament. In 1669 the press was set up at Marseilles, where it continued for a time, and was ultimately removed to Constantinople. In England the first Armenian type was that presented by Dr Fell to Oxford in 1667. The alphabet given in the prolegomena of Walton’s Polyglott was cut in wood.
Of Ethiopic the earliest type appeared in Potken’s Psalter and Song of Solomon, printed at Rome in 1513. The work was reprinted at Cologne in 1518 in Potken’s Polyglott Psalter. In 1548 the New Testament was printed at Rome by some Abyssinian priests. The press of the Propaganda issued a specimen of its fount in 1631, and again in Kircher’s Prodromus Coptics in 1636. Erpenius at Leyden had an Ethiopic fount, which in 1626 was acquired by the Elzevirs. Usher attempted to procure the fount for England; but, his attempt failing, punches were cut and matrices prepared by the London founders for the London Polyglott, which showed the Psalms, Canticles, and New Testament in the Ethiopic version.
Of Coptic the press of the Propaganda possessed a fount, and a specimen was issued in 1636, in which year also Kircher’s Prodromus Coptus appeared from the same press. In England David Wilkins’s edition of the New Testament was printed in 1716 from Coptic types cast with matrices which Dr Fell had presented to Oxford in 1667. The alphabets shown in the introduction and prolegomena to the London Polyglott of 1655 and 1657 were cut in wood.
Of Samaritan the press of the Propaganda had a fount in 1636, and the Paris Polyglott, completed in 1645, contained the entire Pentateuch in type the punches and matrices of which had been specially prepared under Le Jay’s direction. The fount used for the London Polyglott in 1657 is admitted to have been an English production, and was probably cut under the supervision of Usher.
With Slavonic type a psalter was printed at Cracow as early as 1491, and reprinted in Montenegro in 1495. The only Slavonic fount in England was that given by Dr Fell to Oxford, and this, Mores states, was replaced in 1695 by a fount of the more modern Russian character, purchased probably at Amsterdam. The Oratio Dominica of 1700 gives a specimen of this fount, but renders the Hieronymian version in copper-plate. Modern Slavonic, better known as Russian, is said to have appeared first in portions of the Old Testament printed at Prague in 1517-19. Ten years later there was Russian type in Venice. A Russian press was established at Stockholm in 1625, and in 1696 there were matrices in Amsterdam, from which came the types used in Ludolph’s Grammatica Russica, printed at Oxford in that year, and whence also, it is said, the types were procured which furnished the first St Petersburg press, established in 1711 by Peter the Great Mores notes that in 1778 there was no Russian type in England, but that Cottrell was at that time engaged in preparing a fount. It does not appear that this project was carried out, and the earliest Russian in England was cut by Dr Fry from alphabets in the Vocabularia, collected and published for the empress of Russia in 1786-89. This fount appeared in the Pantograρhia in 1799.
A fount of the Etruscan character cut by William Caslon about 1733 for Swinton of Oxford was apparently the first produced. Fournier in 1766 showed an alphabet engraved in metal or wood. In 1771 the Propaganda published a specimen of their fount, and Bodoni of Parma in 1806 exhibited a third in his Oratio Dominica.
Runic types were first used at Stockholm in a Runic and Swedish Alphabetarium printed in 1611. The fount, which was cast at the expense of the king, was afterwards acquired by the university. About the same time Runic type was used at Upsala and at Copenhagen. Voskens of Amsterdam had matrices about the end of that century, and it was from Holland that Francis Junius is supposed to have procured the matrices which in 1677 he presented to Oxford. This fount appears in the Oratio Dominica of 1700, and in Hickes’s Thesaurus, 1703-5, and it remained the only one in England.
Matrices of Gothic type were presented to Oxford by Francis Junius in 1677, and a fount of them was used for the Oratio Dominica of 1700 and in Hickes’s Thesaurus. A different fount was used for Chamberlayne’s Oratio Dominica, printed at Amsterdam in 1715. Caslon cut a fount which appeared in his first specimen in 1734. This and the Oxford fount were the only two in England in 1820.
Founts of Icelandic, Swedish, and Danish were included in Junius’s gift to Oxford in 1677, and were, perhaps, specially prepared in Holland. The first-named is shown in the Oratio Dominica of 1700 and in Hickes’s Thesaurus. Printing had been practised in Iceland since 1531, when a Breviary was printed at Hoolum, in types rudely cut, it is alleged, in wood. In 1574, however, metal types were provided, and several works produced. After a period of decline, printing was revived in 1773, and in 1810 Sir George M'Kenzie reported that the Hoolum press possessed eight founts of type, of which two were Roman, and the remainder of the common Icelandic character, which, like the Danish and Swedish, bears a close resemblance to the German.
For the Anglo-Saxon language the first type was cut by John Day in 1567, under the direction of Archbishop Parker, and appeared in Aelfric’s Paschal Homily in that year and in the Aelfredi Res Gestae of Asser Menevensis in 1574. Anglo-Saxon type was used by Browne in 1617, in Minsheu’s Ductor in Linguas ; and Haviland, who printed the second edition of that work in 1626, had in 1623 made use of the character in Lisle’s edition of Aelfric’s Homily.
The first fount of Irish character was that presented by Queen Elizabeth to O’Kearney in 1571, and used to print the Catechism which appeared in that year in Dublin, from the press of Franckton. But the fount is only partially Irish, many of the letters being ordinary Roman or Italic. It was used in several works during the early years of the 17th century, and as late as 1652 in Godfrey Daniel’s Christian Doctrine, printed in Dublin. The Irish seminaries abroad were better supplied with Irish type. A new type was cut by Moxon, and appeared in 1681 in Boyle’s New Testament, printed by Robert Everingham.
The earliest specimen of music type occurs in Higden’s Polychronicon, printed by De Worde at Westminster in 1495. The square notes appear to have been formed of ordinary quadrats, and the staff-lines of metal rules imperfectly joined. In Caxton’s edition of the same work in 1482 the space had been left to be filled up by hand. The plain chant in the Mainz psalter of 1490, printed in two colours, was probably cut in wood. Hans Froschauer of Augsburg printed music from wooden blocks in 1473, and the notes in Burtius’s Opusculum Musices, printed at Bologna in 1487, appear to have been produced in the same manner; while at Lyons the missal printed by Matthias Hus in 1485 had the staff only printed, the notes being intended to be filled in by hand. About 1500 a musical press was established at Venice by Ottavio Petrucci, at which were produced a series of mass-books with lozenge-shaped notes, each being cast complete with a staff-line. In 1513 he removed to Fossombrone, and obtained a patent from Leo X. for his invention of types for the sole printing of figurative song (cantus figuratus). Before 1550 several European presses followed Petrucci’s example, and music type was used, among other places, at Augsburg in 1506 and 1511, Parma in 1526, Lyons in 1532, and Nuremberg in 1549. In 1525 Pierre Hautin cut punches of lozenge-shaped music at Paris. Round notes were used at Avignon in 1532. In England, after its first use, music-printing did not become general till 1550, when Grafton printed Marbecke’s Book of Common Prayer, “noted” in movable type, the four staff-lines being printed in red and the notes in black. There are only four different sorts of notes used,—three square and one lozenge. About 1660 the detached notes hitherto employed began to give place to the “new tyed note,” by which the heads of sets of quavers could be joined. But at the close of the 17th century music-printing from type became less common, on account of the introduction of stamping and engraving plates for the purpose.
Printing for the blind (compare vol. iii. p. 826) was first introduced in 1784 by Valentin Haiiy, the founder of the asylum for blind children in Paris. He made use of a large script character, from which impressions were taken on a prepared paper, the impressions being so deeply sunk as to leave their marks in strong relief and legible to the touch. Haüy’s pupils not only read in this way, but executed their own typography, and in 1786 printed an account of their institution and labours as a specimen of their press. The first school for the blind in England was opened in Liverpool in 1791, but printing in raised characters was not successfully accomplished till 1827, when Gall of the Edinburgh asylum printed the Gospel of St John from angular types. Alston, the treasurer of the Glasgow asylum, introduced the ordinary Roman capitals in relief, and this system was subsequently improved upon by the addition of the lower-case letters by Dr Fry, the type-founder, whose specimen gained the prize of the Edinburgh Society of Arts in 1837. Several rival systems have competed in England for adoption, of which the most important are those of Lucas, Frere, Moon, Braille, Carton, and Alston; the last-named, as perfected by Dr Fry, seems likely to become the recognized method of printing for the blind in all European countries.
As regards initials in the earliest printed books, see above, p. 686. The trouble and cost involved in the use of the initial director early suggested the use of wood-cut initials, and Erhard Ratdolt of Venice, about 1475, is generally supposed to have been the first printer to introduce the literae florentes, called also lettres tourneures, or typi tomatissimi, which eventually superseded the hand-painted initials. Caxton introduced one or two kinds in 1484. Among the earliest to be used are the so-called Lombardic initials or capitals. The more elaborate initials, such as those used in the Mainz indulgences and psalter, by Aldus at Venice, by Johann Schoeffer at Mainz in 1518, by Tory and the Estiennes at Paris, by Froben at Basel, and by the other great printers of their day, were known as lettres grises. Besides these, the ordinary “two-line letters” or large plain capitals came into use; and these were generally cast, whilst the ornamental letters were for the most part engraved on wood or metal.
Type ornaments and flowers began, like the initials, with the illuminators, and were afterwards cut on wood or metal. The first printed ornament or vignette is supposed to be the scutum or arms of Fust and Schoeffer in their edition of the Bible of 1462. There is no vignette in the Subiaco Lactantius of 1465 (as stated by Mr Reed, Letter Foundries, p. 82). In Holtrop’s Monum. Typogr. des Pays-Bas may be seen borders used by some of the earliest printers of Holland (1475-1490) which would not look bad even in the present time. Caxton in 1490 used ornamental pieces to form the border for his Fifteen O’s. At the same time the Paris printers engraved still more elaborate border pieces. At Venice entire frames were engraved in one piece, while Aldus as early as 1495 used tasteful head-pieces cut in artistic harmony with his lettres grises. Early in the 16th century we observe detached ornaments and flourishes which have evidently been cast from a matrix.
Literature.— Besides the works of Berjeau, Bernard, Blades, Hawkins, Hessels, Holtrop, Noel Humphreys, Koehler, Jules Philippe, T. B. Reed, Sotheby, Weigel, &c., already mentioned, consult also Bigmore and Wyman, A Bibliography of Printing , London, 1880; Geo. Wolfg. Panzer, Annales Typog., Nuremberg, 1793, &c.; Lud. Hain, Repertorium Bibliog., Stuttgart, 1826-38; Holtrop, Cat. Librorum Sec. XVo Impressorum in Bibl. Regia Hagana, The Hague, 1856; Μ. F. A. G. Campbell, Ann. de la Typog. Néerlandaise au XVe Siècle, The Hague, 1874; Rob. Sinker, A Cat. of the XV. Century Printed Books in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, Cambridge, 1876; W. Th. Lowndes, Bibliographers Manual, ed. by Henr. G. Bohn, London, 1S58, &c.; J. C. Brunet, Manuel du Libraire, Paris, 1860(four earlier editions); Th. F. Dibdin, Bibliotheca Spenceriana, London, 1814, &c., and his other works; Ennen, Katalog der Incunabeln in der Stadt-Bibliothek zu Köln ; Schoepflin, Vindiciae Typog., 1760; Meerman, origines Typog., The Hague, 1765; Dupont, Hist. de l'Impr., Paris, 1869; Firmin-Didot, Hist. de la Typog., Paris, 1882; E. Duverger, Hist. de I’Invention de l'Impr., Paris, 1840; P. Lambinet, Origine de l'mpr., Paris, 1810; Ch. Ruelens, La Légende de St Servais, Brussels, 1873, 8vo; J. P. A. Madden, Lettres d'un Bibliographe, Paris, 1868-78; Wetter, Krit. Gesch. der Erfindung der Buchdruckerkunst, Mainz, 1836; A. de Vries, Êclaircissemens sur l’Histoire de l’Inv. de l'Impr., The Hague, 1843; Jos. Ames, Typogr. Antiquities (augmented by W. Herbert), London, 1785-90; T. C. Hansard, Typographia, London, 1825; Thomas, Hist. of Printing in America, Albany, 1874; Th. L. Devinne, The Inv. of Print., London, 1877; W. Skeen, Early Typography, Colombo, 1872; Sam. Palmer, A General Hist. of Print., London, 1732; W. Young Ottley, Inquiry concerning the Inv. of Print., London, 1863; Henry Bradshaw, A Classified Index of the 15th Century Books in the Collection of the late Μ. J. de Meyer, London, 1870; Id., Hist. of the Founts of Type and Woodcut Devices used by Printers in Holland in the Fifteenth Century, London, 1871; Id., The Printer of the Historia S. Albani, Cambridge, 1868; A. Von der Linde, Haarlem Legend, London, 1870; Id., Gutenberg, Stuttgart, 1881; Id., Gesch. der Erfind. der Buchdruckerkunst, Berlin, 1886; Schaab, Gesch. der Erfind. der Buchdruckerk., Mainz, 1830; K. Falkenstein, Gesch. der Buchdruckerk., Leipsic, 1856; Lorck, Handb. der Gesch. der Buchdruckerk., Leipsic, 1882; K. Faulmann, lllustr. Gesch. der Buchdruckerk., vienna, 1882; Μ. Denis, Wiens Buchdruckergesch. bis 1560, vienna, 1782; C. R. Hildeburn, A Century of Printing—The Issues of the Press in Pennsylvania, 1684-1784, Philadelphia, 1887; and J. Garcia Icazbalceta, Bibliog. Mexicana del Siglo XVI. , Mexico, 1887. The titles of other works on the invention, progress, and process of printing, &c., may be learned from the lists of books on such subjects in the works already quoted. (J. H. H.)
Part II.— Practical.
Printing has been defined to be the act, art, or practice of impressing letters, characters, or figures on paper, cloth, or other material, the definition being based on the etymology (Old Fr. empreindre, from Lat. imprimere). Technically the same definition might be applied to such arts as those of calico and oilcloth printing, and even of moulding, embossing, coining, and stamping; but in point of fact these are never understood when the word “printing” is employed. There is also printing without pressure, such as photographic printing. The use of a pigment or ink must be regarded as an indispensable element. The application of the term is therefore confined to the use of pressure and a pigment for literary and pictorial purposes. As thus defined, printing includes three entirely different processes—not inaptly called the polygraphic arts—viz., chalcography or copperplate printing (compare Engraving, vol. viii. p. 439 sq.), Lithography (q.v. ) or chemical stoneprinting, and typography or letterpress printing. The last-named is that to which the present article is confined.
The difference between the three methods lies essentially in the nature or conformation of the surface that is inked, and which afterwards gives a reproduction or image in reverse on the material to be impressed. In copperplate printing the whole of a flat surface is inked, and a portion of the ink sinks into an incision or trench, in which it still remains after the surface is cleansed. When pressure is brought to bear, this ink is transferred to the paper, giving an impression of a line. In lithographic printing the flat surface is protected except at certain places, where it is slightly coated with the ink, which practically leaves the stone quite level, but also marks a line when pressure is brought to bear. In typography the printing surface is in relief. It alone receives ink, the remainder being protected by its lower level. Any kind of printing done from a relief surface belongs to letterpress printing, such as a woodcut, a casting in metal, india-rubber, celluloid, xylonite, &c. (or “stereotype”), or a deposition by electricity (or “electrotype”). The typographic method requires a surface that is more difficult to form than either of the other two. In lithography the surface may be obtained by merely writing or drawing on the stone; in copperplate printing the line may be immediately incised into or scratched on the plate; but for letterpress printing the surface between the lines in relief has to be cut away. Hence the tediousness of wood-engraving, in which all the surface of the block has to be removed except those parts that are to be printed from and which form the black lines in the impression; and the conformation of a type surface is similar.
Typography, however, has many compensating advantages. Impressions are taken with much greater facility. The inking appliance glides over the relief lines to be printed from, whereas it would cling to the entire surface of the stone or the metal; hence much greater pressure would be required in these cases. The unprintable part of the stone in lithography has to be damped, so as to repel the ink; the same portion has to be inked and then cleaned off in copperplate printing; but in letterpress printing the ink only that has to be transferred to the paper needs to be applied to the type. When the design has been drawn on the stone or scratched into the copper, the result does not admit of any further application beyond that at first contemplated. But in letterpress printing the surface may be of a composite character. It may be formed of single pieces representing the several letters, and these, when once formed, may be employed in endless combinations. Only by such means are cheap newspapers and books possible. Before the invention of typography (as in the East to the present day), the different pages of a book were printed from wooden blocks, cut after the manner of a wood-engraving. Blocks of this kind are of no use for printing after their first purpose has been fulfilled. They must necessarily be made very slowly and with much labour. In forming a page of a book, on the other hand, by the typographic method there need (excluding necessary wear and tear) only be the cost of “composing” the types and of “distributing” them into their proper receptacles, from which they may be re-taken many times to form other compositions.
Types: their Material Characteristics.
Exclusive of such printing surfaces as wood-blocks and casts, the letters, marks, and signs with which letterpress printing is executed are called types, a proportioned quantity of each of the letters of the alphabet in any one body or face forming a fount. A bookwork fount contains single letters, diphthongs, ligatures (such as ff, fl), accented letters, figures, fractions, points, reference marks, dashes or metal rales (as―), leaders (as......), braces (z — l —.), and signs (as &, £). It also includes quadrats,—pieces of metal of various widths, which do not print, but are used to compensate for the shortness of occasional lines, as at the close of a paragraph— and spaces, which separate words and letters. There are thus about 226 separate characters in every ordinary English book-work fount. The table used by type-founders to regulate the number of each of the several sorts in a fount is called a bill of type. The sorts are supplied by English type-founders in certain definite proportions, depending upon the number of lower-case m’s. A bill of 3000 m’s usually contains the following :— [table]
Such a fount would weigh about 750 lb if of pica size, 480 lb if long primer, 400 lb if bourgeois, 330 lb brevier, 280 lb minion, 220 lb nonpareil. The numbers of the respective letters are based on the requirements of the English language; other languages of course require different proportions. In Latin and French, for instance, q and u would be deficient, h in excess, and w needless. The number of the respective letters may be, and sometimes is, apportioned by weight; for example, in one of the “schemes” of founts used by type-founders a fount of 125 ft Roman with, as its complement, 10 lb Italic, includes 8 oz. of E, M, C; 9 oz. of T; 8 ft of e; 5 ft each of a, h, n, o, t; and so on, down to 3 oz. of z. To estimate the quantity of type required for a page, the number of square inches it contains is measured and divided by 4, the quotient being the approximate weight of the matter in pounds. In small founts, however, 50 per cent. is added, and in large ones 30 to 40 per cent., to allow for the letters generally left in the cases, not being required in the job, and for sorts, &c. These figures, although useful, are only approximative, the proportion of the several ingredients of type-metal used by different founders for the various sizes of type greatly varying the calculation.
Each of the parts of a type has a technical name. In the annexed diagram (fig. 1) of the capital letter M the darkest space a, a, a, a, is called the face ; and only that part of the type touches the paper in printing. The face is divided into the stem, marked 1, which comprises the whole outline of the type M; the serifs, or the horizontal lines marked 2, which complete the outline' of the letter; the beard, consisting of the bevel or sloping part marked b, b, and the shoulder or flat portion below b. The shank is the entire body of the letter, d, the front part (that shown) being known as the belly and the corresponding part behind as the back. The spaces at h and h are the counters, which regulate the distances apart of the stems in a line of type. The hollow groove extending across the shank at e, e is the nick, which enables the workman to recognize the direction of the type and to distinguish different founts of the same body. The absence of this simple expedient would retard the operation of composing types by fully one-half. The earliest type-founders did not know the use of the nick. In some letters, such as j and f, a part of the face overhangs the shank; this is called the kern. The groove g divides the bottom of the type into two parts called the feet. An impression from that part of a type on which it stands would be as Types must be perfectly rectangular, the minutest deviation rendering them useless. Any roughness at the sides is called burr, and any injury to their faces a batter. Smoothness, sharpness of angle, and perfection of finish are also prime requirements. A line of types, when viewed along the back, presents the appearance of a solid bar of metal.
Types which have the face cast in the middle of the shank, as a, c, e, m, &c., and thus leave an open space above them corresponding to that below, caused by the beard, are known as short letters. Those whose stem extends to the top of the shank, as b, d, f, &c., are called ascending letters. Those that have a stem extending over the shoulder, as g, p, &c., are called descending letters. Those that are both ascending and descending, and extend over the whole of the shank, as Q and j, are long letters. Small letters and figures cast upon the upper part of the shank, as l α , are called superiors; those very low down on the shank are inferiors, as H 3 . Types that are very heavy and massive in appearance are called fat-faced; those that are fine and delicate, lean-faced. A type whose face is not in proportion to the depth of the shank (e.g., a small pica cast on a pica body) is a bastard type.
Types are of various sizes, ranging from those used in printing pocket Bibles to those for large placards. The variation is confined to the superficial dimensions of their ends, or bodies, as they are called. Each body has a distinctive name. The following are specimens of the principal bodies of ordinary types, and show the relation of the various bodies one to another—
It is a confusing and inconvenient anomaly that the types made by different English founders vary in size, although they bear the same name. The above figures refer to the types of Messrs Miller and Richard, the royal type-founders for Scotland; but other eminent makers supply, for instance, long primer which is 89½, 90, or 92 lines to the foot. This has been remedied in America by an agreement on the part of the founders to adopt one standard pica, to divide that pica into a certain number of equal parts, and to cast all their types as multiples of one of these parts. They divide the pica into twelve points, and the point is the unit upon which the system is based. There is also another practical advantage in this multiple system: each type bears a simple proportion to the others, and therefore can be used in exact combination. Thus pearl is 5, nonpareil 6, minion 7, brevier 8, bourgeois 9, long primer 10, small pica 11, and pica 12 points. In Germany, France, and other countries of the Continent a uniform system of points has been adopted, based on a scale of 133 “Ciceros” (corpus 12) to 60 centimetres. The types which most nearly correspond to those already mentioned are :— [table]
The number of lines given to the foot in the above specimens of bodies is the theoretic and practically the only approximative standard. The height of types varies slightly with different founders, the mean being 29 / 32 in. The old Scotch height is about 1 / 100 in. higher. Types lower than the ordinary dimension are said to be low to paper, and if surrounded by higher types will not give a perfect impression. Spaces and quadrats were formerly only three-fourths of an inch in height; but, since electrotyping has become so common, they are almost invariably cut high, i.e., up to the shoulder of the type. Six lines of pica and twelve lines of nonpareil each cover an inch in depth. It is, however, not possible to know the size of a type in a printed page by placing a rule measure upon it, as many books are not set solid: the lines are not close together, but leaded out with pieces of lead, to make them cover a larger space. A communication of great importance contributed to a newspaper may be set up in the same type as the leading article; but if not leaded it will appear to the non-technical reader to be in a smaller character.
The width of pages or columns, in the technical language of the printing office, is expressed according to the number of “ems,”—
that is, of a pica m,—the square of the depth of pica. As the latter is one-sixth of an inch, the em is the same width,' and a page of twenty-four ems wide is equal to one 4 inches wide. The columns of this Encyclopaedia are 19 ems wide.
According to the purpose for which they are used, types are divided into two classes—book type, including Roman and Italic, and job type, including a multitude of fanciful forms of letters, chiefly founded on the shape of the Roman and Italic letters, and intended to be more prominent, delicate, elegant, &c. It is impossible to enumerate all the varieties of the latter class, as additions are being constantly made and once popular styles always going out of fashion. The leading varieties are the antiques, which are Roman letters with strokes of nearly uniform thickness, as M; sanserifs or grotesques, which have no serifs, as M; blacks, as; and scripts, which represent the modern cursive or Italian handwriting, as Black letter is now only a jobbing type in English-speaking countries, although, as stated in the historical section of this article, it was the first character used in printing. It is still used in Germany, with certain modifications, as the principal textletter for books and newspapers. A comparison of the numerous reproductions that have been issued of Caxton’s works with any modern line of black letter will show how greatly the form and style have been altered within a period of four centuries. The present style of Roman type dates only from about the first quarter of the 18th century. Previously the approved shape was as follows :—
The use of this type was revived by Whittingham of the Chiswick Press about 1843, and it has since become a favourite form, under the name of old style. Some of the punches cut by the first notable English type-founder, William Caslon (1692-1766), have been preserved and types are being constantly cast from them. Nearly all founders now produce modernized old style. For the recent revival of old style printing, see p. 710 below.
Large letters, such as are employed for large bills and posters, are made of wood, chiefly rock maple, sycamore, pine, and lime. These are cut up, planed to the required size, and then engraved, generally by special machinery, this being a business quite distinct from that of letter-founding. The larger letters are designated as two line, three line, four line, &c.,—meaning twice, thrice, or four times the depth of face of pica or great primer, &c.
Type metal is an alloy, of which lead is the principal ingredient; but, owing to its softness, antimony and tin are added (see vol. ii. p. 129 and vol. xiv. p. 378). A patent type metal (Besley’s) was invented in 1855 in which the mixture consisted of lead, regulus of antimony, tin, nickel, copper, and bismuth. Nearly all type is now made with some of these metals superadded. Ductility, hardness, and toughness are the prime requisites of a type metal.
The earliest printers made their own types, and the books printed from them can now be distinguished with almost as much certainty as handwriting can be identified. The modern printer has recourse to the type-founder. The first step in the making of type is cutting the letter on the end of a piece of fine steel, forming the punch (see fig. 2), which is afterwards hardened. This is an operation requiring great care and nicety (there being comparatively few adepts at it), in order that the various sorts in a fount may be exactly uniform in width, height, and general proportions to each other. A separate punch is required for each character in every fount of type, and the making of them is the most expensive branch of type-founding. During the process of its manufacture the punch is frequently tested or measured by delicate gauges to insure its accuracy. When finished it is held over a light, the flame of which blackens the letter, and thus enables an impression, called a smoke proof, to be stamped on paper. When the letter is perfect, it is driven into a piece of polished copper, called the drive or strike (fig. 3). This passes to the justifier, who makes the width and depth of the faces uniform throughout the fount. They must then be made to line exactly with each other. When completed, the strike becomes the matrix (fig. 4), wherein the face of the type is made. This method of making a matrix has until now been in almost universal use in Great Britain. It is, however, a very slow and costly process. In America the great majority of matrices are made otherwise. If the design of the fount to be produced is original, it is often cut by hand or by an engraving-machine on the piece of metal which is to form the matrix. If, on the other hand, an existing fount has to be copied, the matrix is made by electro-deposition. A perfectly good type is selected, and inserted in a mould specially made, called a fusible mould (fig. 5). Sufficient metal of a more fusible nature than the type is cast round it, and forms a shape similar to that of the ordinary matrix. This fusible cast is then placed in a box protected by glass and guttapercha, in order that the copper deposit may be kept square and to the proper dimensions. This arrangement also limits the deposition to the face. The box is immersed in the copper electrotyping solution, in which it may be left until the deposit of metal has increased to a thickness at which it may be backed up with copper, or it is left until it reaches the full thickness, which is about 5 / 16 of an inch. It is then fitted in line, set, position, and height. The minutest imperfection or blemish is reproduced by the deposition, and the type cast from such a matrix is a perfect counterpart of the original. A school of type-engravers has recently sprung up in the United States, cutting exclusively on metal and producing ornamentation and finish which the punch-cutters cannot rival. It is expected that in the course of time the electrotype matrix will nearly supersede that made in the old-fashioned way with the punch. In the ordinary method the mould in which the body of the type is formed is made of hardened steel in two parts; one part is fastened to the machine and is stationary, while the other is movable so that it may be adjusted for the proper width of the letters, as one is wider than another. The combined matrix and mould are then adjusted to the type-casting machine, which manufactures types at the rate of from 25 to about 120 per minute, according to the body. The metal is kept fluid by a little furnace underneath and is injected into the mould by a pump, the spout of which is in front of the metal pot. The mould is movable, and at every revolution of the wheel it comes up to the spout, receives a charge of metal, and flies back with a fully formed type in its bosom; when the upper half of the mould is lifted, a type is ejected. The spring in front holds the copper matrix in close proximity to the mould. The letter a, for instance, stamped in the matrix is directly opposite the aperture in the mould which meets the spout of the pump. When a due proportion of a’s are cast, another matrix with b stamped on it takes its place, and so on throughout the whole fount. The types, however, are not finished when they leave the machine. There will be found attached to each a wedge-shaped jet (fig. 6), somewhat similar to that on a bullet cast in a hand-mould. These are picked off by boys at the rate of from 2000 to 6000 per hour. A burr which still adheres to the shoulder of the type is taken off by the rubbers, who rub the sides on circular stones or on files. The types afterwards go to the setters, who arrange them in long lines ready for the dresser, and he slips them into a long stick, turns them on their face, and, after duly fastening them, cuts with a plane a groove in the bottom, which forms the feet. (These processes are now frequently performed by a machine, which produces types that do not require rubbing or dressing.) The types are then dressed and the picker takes them in hand, in order to pick out each defective letter with the aid of a magnifying glass. They are finally made up into parcels of a convenient size, called typefounders’ pages, weighing about 8 lb each.
Subjoined is a description of a machine for performing automatically the various operations of casting and finishing type which was invented about twenty years ago by Messrs J. R. Johnson and J. S. Atkinson. In this apparatus the metal is fused, injected into the mould, the cast letter turned out, rubbed or planed, first on one side and then on the other, the feet cut out and smoothed, the dressed sides planed alternately, and the finished letter set up on a stick ready for use by the printer. The casting machine and the dressing machine are in reality distinct, though mounted on a common frame. The whole is driven by a steam-engine or other prime mover. The casting machine consists of a furnace covered by a shallow pot holding the fused metal. In this is a pump, and the mould is placed opposite its nozzle. The mould being adjusted and the matrix in its place, the molten metal is injected and then solidifies, forming a perfect type, but with jet attached. This letter is then thrust out, and the mould closes again for another jet of molten metal. All this is effected by one revolution of the axle of the machine. The letters pass through a channel one by one into the dressing machine. On arriving there they have each of their sides planed in succession by being held against cutters. When one side is made true with respect to the set of the letter on its face, it is passed over a second cutter, which planes the second side absolutely parallel to the first. After this the type is carried in a line at right angles to its former course past a series of similar cutters, which plane out the foot, further smooth its surface, and plane each of the two dressed sides in succession; this completes the dressing or finishing of the types, which, continuing on their course, pass upon a composing stick and are ready for the printer. The line of types presents the appearance of a solid bar of metal, so true, flat, and square are the surfaces of the several separate letters. This machine has been considerably improved by Mr P. Μ. Shanks. The new machine is of simpler construction and its parts are more compact. It does not produce better type, nor work quicker,—the speed in all type machines being regulated by the time required to cool the volume of metal, which, when on the machine, is assisted by having water percolating through the heated parts of the mould. The working of the new machine is more readily grasped by the manipulator, and there is considerable reduction in its cost.
Type-Setting or Composing.
We may now describe the manipulation of the types in the printing office, and for the sake of conciseness reference must be made only to the operations connected with ordinary book-work. These differ in details from the methods in use in the other two departments of the printing business,—news-work and job-work.
The types, received from the foundry in the packages called pages, are placed in shallow trays called cases. These contain compartments or boxes, each of which is appropriated to some particular sort or character. The cases when in use stand on frames or sloping desks. The case at the top is the upper case, and tha t below the lower case. The former contains ninetyeight equal-sized boxes, appropriated principally to the capital and small capital letters; the latter has fifty-three boxes of various sizes, appropriated to the lower-case sorts. The difference in the size of the boxes corresponds to the difference of quantity of letters in a fount, as already stated,—the lower-case e for instance having the largest box. The localization of the letters, &c., is a subject on which opinions differ, the object being to bring the letters most frequently required nearest to the hand of the compositor as he stands at work. As a man picks out from the boxes seldom less than 1500 letters per hour and distributes or replaces on the average about 5000 per hour, it is necessary that the most economical allocation of the boxes should be adopted. The system of allocating the various types is called the lay of the case; fig. 7 illustrates the plan used in the principal English book offices; but there are many deviations.
The types when taken from the cases are arranged in lines or “composed” in an instrument called a composing stick, made of iron, brass, or gun metal. The slide in the middle is movable so as to accommodate varying lengths of lines. In the composing room the frames are arranged in rows, supporting the cases. The compositor fixes the “copy,” or document which he is to repeat in type, in a convenient place before his eye, and on some part of the case that is seldom used. In his left hand he holds the composing stick, and with the thumb and first finger of the right hand lifts the letters from the boxes, and arranges them in the composing stick, every letter, point, or sign being picked out separately. In this operation he is much assisted by the use of a setting-rule, a thin brass or steel plate which, being removed as successive lines are completed, keeps the type in place. When so many words and parts of words as will nearly fill the line have been composed, it is made the exact length required by inserting or diminishing the space between the several words. This is called justifying the line and is effected by means of the spaces already mentioned. If the work is not “solid ”—that is, if the lines are not close together— the strips of metal called leads are used. They vary in thickness, but always form aliquot parts of pica body. A good compositor must possess intelligence and a reasonable amount of general knowledge: he must be able to read his copy with readiness, and to understand its meaning, in order to punctuate it properly. He should be able to spell correctly, as some copy is almost undecipherable in regard to separate letters, while other copy is incorrectly spelt. When the composing stick is filled, the type is lifted on to a galley, a shallow tray of wood or metal, two or three sides of which are flanged, for the purpose of supporting the type, when the galley is slightly inclined. Stickful after stickful of type is placed on the galley until it is full. The matter is then fastened up, a proof taken at the proof press, and the work of the reader or corrector of the press—described below—begins. The proof, marked with the necessary corrections, is given back to the compositor, in order that he may make the required alterations in the type.
The type, being duly corrected, is made up into pages of the required length (unless the author has desired to see proof in slip). It is then imposed, that is, the pages are arranged in such a manner that, when printed and the sheet folded, they will fall in due numerical sequence. The impression from any arrangement of pages will be the reverse of that in which they are laid down. If an ordinary four-page newspaper supplement be opened and spread out with the first page uppermost, it will be found that on this side the order of pages is 4, 1; when turned the pages are 2, 3. The type pages must be ranged in the reverse way, as 1, 4; 3, 2. Thus the fourth page is placed alongside the first, because both must be printed together on the outside; the third page is to the left, and the second to the right, because in books the odd page—the verso— is always to the right. For a quarto a sheet of paper is folded twice, that is once across its breadth and then once in a perpendicular direction down the middle. It contains four leaves, and if these are printed on both sides eight pages. The two sides of a sheet are called the outer and inner formes respectively. A sheet of octavo is folded three times, making 8 leaves or 16 pages. The size of a book depends, not only upon the number of times the sheet has been folded, and described accordingly as 4to, 8vo, 12mo, &c., but upon the size of the sheets. The dimensions of the papers commonly used in book-printing are :—imperial, 22 × 30 inches; super royal, 20½ × 27½; royal, 20 × 25; medium, 19 × 24; demy, 17½ × 22½; double crown, 20 × 30; double foolscap, 17 × 27; post, 15¾ ×19½. Hence to say that a book is a quarto merely gives no precise indication of its dimensions, as a quarto of one size of paper may be smaller than an octavo of another; it is also necessary to know the size of the sheets of which it is composed.
When a printed book is opened, it will be found that at the foot of certain pages there is usually a letter and at the foot of another a letter and a figure, as B, B 2; further on another letter and another letter and figure. On going through the book it will be seen that the letters are in regular alphabetical order, and occur at regular intervals of eight, twelve, sixteen, &c., pages. These designate the several sheets of which the book is composed and are called signatures, so that a sheet may be designated B, and the pages of which it consists are thereby sufficiently indicated. (Occasionally, as in the present work, numbers are used instead of letters.) These signatures assist the binder in folding, as they occupy a certain specified place in each sheet; hence to ascertain if the sheet has been folded properly it is only necessary to examine the position of the signature. The binder also is thus assisted in gathering or collating together the sheets of a volume in proper order. Signature A is omitted, because it would be on the title or first page, and would be both unnecessary and unsightly. By old custom J, V, and W are discarded, I and J, U and V being originally used indiscriminately by printers, while W was written UU or VV. When the alphabet is exhausted, a new one is commenced, distinguished by a figure precedent, as 2 B, 2 C, &c.
The pages of types are arranged in proper order on a flat table, covered with stone or metal, called the imposing stone, and are then ready to be made into a forme, that is, in such a state that they can be securely fastened up and moved about. The forme is enclosed in an iron frame or chase, subdivided by a cross bar. The portions of the type are separated by furniture, which may be of metal or wood or both. It is of the same height as the chase, but lower than the type, and therefore does not print, but forms the margin of the printed pages. At the sides of the two sections of the formes are pieces of furniture of a tapering shape, called sidesticks, and at the top and bottom corresponding pieces, called footsticks. Small wedges, called quoins, are inserted and driven forward by a mallet and a shooting-stick, so that they gradually exert increasing pressure upon the type. Other mechanical means for locking up are also occasionally adopted. When sufficiently locked up, the whole is quite as firm and portable, however many thousands of pieces of metal it may consist of, as if it were a single plate. In this rapid sketch we purposely omit mention of several operations which, though important and indispensable, are only of interest to the workman.
For many years endeavours have been made to construct machines for type-setting which should obviate hand labour. Picking out the types separately from their boxes and arranging: them singly in the composing stick is an irksome and monotonous operation, and one which it might be thought comparatively easy to perform by automatic machinery. But of the many different composing machines that have been invented less than half a dozen have stood the test of practical experience. These have been confined to special classes of work, and it is open to doubt whether the nimble fingers of a good compositor, aided by the brains which no machinery can supply, do not favourably compare on the ground of economy with any possible mechanical arrangement. On the other hand, employers and makers of machines allege that owing to the opposition of the men machine type-setting has not had fair play. However that may be, it is undeniable that a composing machine is still rare in printing offices, and where employed it is only as an auxiliary to the ordinary labour of the men. It deserves to be mentioned that nearly the whole of the Times, with the single exception of the advertisements, has for years past been set up by machinery, and that more than 10,000 pages of the present edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica have also been so set up. We have not space to describe with any minuteness the construction of composing machines. In the Fraser machine (fig. 8), one of the simplest of its class, which has been made use of to the extent already mentioned in the present work, the types are contained in a series of grooved trays A, in the upper part of the machine, the trays having previously been filled by complementary apparatus called the distributor. In these trays the types are kept in position, and pressed towards the front part of each tray, by slips of metal attached by cords to the boxwheels B; each of these contains a spring of sufficient strength to press the line of types steadily forward against the separators C, which are formed with an inverted shoulder, under which the front type in each line passes. The keys are connected by levers to the separators, and the depression of any key causes the corresponding separator to descend, carrying with it the front type of the line into the grooved face-plate, down which it slides into the composing stick G. Immediately the finger is lifted from the key the spiral spring D raises the separator to its original position, and the next type in the line takes the place of the one just released, and so in succession as fast as the keys can be pressed. Under the keys runs a rod connected by a crank motion with the pusher G, which, with every depression of a key, pushes forward the line of type in the composing stick, thus making room for the next letter. The matter is thus set in one continuous line, ready to be divided into lines of the required length either by the operator at the machine or by another hand working in conjunction. The speed of the machine varies from 6000 to 12,000 types per hour, but is regulated solely by the skill of the operator, as the machine will work as fast as the keys can be pressed. The composing machines now employed at the Times office are an improved form of an apparatus invented by Charles Kastenbein, and introduced there in 1872. The operator sits in front of four rows of keys one above the other, something like the manuals of an organ, but only about 3 feet wide. Each of the keys corresponds to a type or character. The types are kept in tin tubes placed vertically at the top of the machine. The depression of a key works a series of levers, and an iron finger pushes the undermost type from its tube, when it falls into a groove formed in a conducting plate, narrowing at the bottom to its apex. Immediately below is a receptacle, and by the action of a treadle the type is pushed along a channel. Other letters follow, the matter being thus set up in a long line, on a groove of the width of an em quad, and running from left to right. The type when it first comes into the groove is in an upright position, but in passing along it becomes twisted, so that the letters stand at an angle of about 45° when they reach the point at which they are justified. This groove communicates at its dexter extremity with the justifying galley,—a simple apparatus, something of the nature of a composing stick and galley combined. Then the type is divided into portions or lines of the required length and justified in the galley, which is adjustable to the width of the required length. As the long line approaches him, the justifier with a small bodkin accelerates a portion large enough in his judgment to fill the width of his column. When this is done he presses his foot on the treadle under him, and thereby causes the line to be pushed into the galley. The line is justified by spaces and quads, and enough type is then taken for another line. The speed depends on the operator, and varies from 6000 to 13,000 types per hour, the average being about 8000, with two operators,—a justifier and a compositor being also necessary. These machines are worked in the Times office at the rate of a column of solid minion an hour. The machine occupies a floor space of only about 4 feet wide by 2 deep.
Another machine at present in use is that of Mr Robert Hattersley of Manchester. It probably furnished the general scheme of others in use. One of the most ingenious machines of the kind is that of Mr Alexander Mackie of Warrington, its general principle being the adoption to setting up types of the Jacquard card of the power loom, which weaves automatically the most intricate patterns of cloth. The apparatus consists of three parts,—two used for preparing the “card” or ribbon, which directs the third in the operation of type composing. The perforator is like a small cottage pianoforte. When the keys are struck they produce a perforation, and the ribbon is made to move aside a little, so that a new surface may be presented for puncturing. The composer is a circular iron table, 4 feet in diameter, having round its periphery a number of boxes divided into sections, each of which holds one kind of type. On a slightly lower plane is a wheel carrying little brass tables, hinged at one end. When the machine is in motion, the types are pushed out on to the table, which passes with its freight round its course until it comes to the point of delivery, when the types are swept off. The rising of the table, and the drawing out of the types, are guided by the perforated paper. Hence the machine sets types without a human compositor. When once the ribbon is perforated, it may be used over again for subsequent editions of the same work, which may be in a different size of type. These machines are only in use in the office of the inventor.
As has been already described under Reporting (vol. xx. p. 406), the parliamentary reports of some newspapers are set up entirely without copy,—by the ear, not by the eye. It has been found that by the aid of the machine the matter can be set up half as fast again as it could be written out: the average speed of the composing machine is 230 lines per hour when the copy is dictated to the operator, whereas the most skilful workman setting at ease in the usual way can do but 50 lines per hour.
For many years it was a favourite idea with inventors, especially those who were not practical printers, that great economy might be gained in composition by the use of word-characters or “logotypes,” instead of single letters. The constant repetition of many words seemed to suggest that they might be cast in one piece. Combinations suitable for affixes and suffixes, as ad-, ac-, in-, -ing, -ment, &c., it was also suggested, should be used instead of the single component letters. The suggestion has, however, not been carried out, at least to any considerable extent. The chief practical objection to it is that it involves the use of cases with an inconveniently large number of boxes. The more the variety of characters is multiplied the more “travel” of the compositor’s hand over the cases is necessary for picking them up, and by so much is the speed of his work retarded. Logotypes, too, are more liable to accident; when one letter is damaged the combination is rendered useless.
The correction of the type is a subject that should be understood by all who have to do with printing, as many mistakes are made on the part of authors which a little technical knowledge would prevent. In the course of setting any copy or MS. which may be given him the compositor unavoidably picks up some wrong letters, or mistakes the words in the copy before him, or fails to follow the style prescribed for the work. These are called printer's errors. When the compositor has finished his task, a first proof of the matter is taken. This proof is read through and compared with the copy by the proof reader or corrector of the press and an assistant, the copy-holder or reading boy. The proof is then sent back to the compositor and the latter is required to correct all the inaccuracies indicated therein—in fact, to attend to all the directions given by the reader—and this has to be done at his own cost if he is working on piece—that is, paid by results according to work done —or by the employer if he is working “on establishment wages” or paid by time. Another proof called a revise is now taken; this is carefully compared with the previous proof. If the corrections have not all been made, the revise is marked accordingly, and sent back to the compositor, who is required to remedy the imperfections. When the proof is deemed accurate, or “clean,” it is sent, generally along with the copy, to the author,—being now termed an author’s proof. Finally, in the printing office the matter is carefully re-read and compared with the last author’s proof by the press reader, who signs it and on his responsibility the type is printed off.
The operation of distributing the types is the converse of that of composing: it is de-composing the forme and returning the several letters to their proper boxes in the case. It is done, as already mentioned, with remarkable rapidity. The forme is first washed over with an alkaline or other detergent to remove the ink from its surface, and then laid down on the imposing surface, unlocked, and damped; this assists the cohesion of the type, after the chase, furniture, side sticks, &c., are removed. The compositor then takes in his left hand, supported by a setting rule, a portion of type in lines, and with the right hand takes a word or so between the finger and thumb, letting each letter drop separately into its proper box. There is hardly any operation which so strikes a spectator as distributing, for a competent distributor literally showers the types into their receptacles. The types are held upside down, that is, with the nicks uppermost; hence the letters of each word are read from left to right like ordinary matter when printed, but the words are of course dealt with in the inverse order.
Distributing machines of many different kinds have been invented.
They may be divided into two classes,—those worked entirely by keys or notes, like the pianoforte, and those in which the distributing is to a certain extent done automatically. For the former class only the type in ordinary use in printing offices is required. For the latter the type requires to be specially prepared, each character having a distinctive nick or nicks upon it, which correspond with the particular channel of the machine it is intended to occupy, and by which it is guided to its special compartment. Kastenbein has produced a distributor which may be described as a composing machine reversed. The matter to be decomposed is placed at the top in its appropriate tray or fixed galley, the sides of which are adjustable to fit any measure, the back being so constructed that it may be advanced to keep the matter always up to the front. As the matter is pressed towards the front, the first letter of it is brought in contact with a steel pusher, behind it being an aperture communicating with the channel of the guide plate. The matter is read by the operator; and he touches the key corresponding to the letter that comes first. Thus the types are conveyed one by one to the guide plate or conductor. It has grooves furnished with little gates or switches, like the points of a railway, and these direct the types into their proper channels. The tubes into which the types are deposited are placed at the foot of each groove. Thus every time a key is depressed the switches move, the pusher sends the type to be distributed out of the line, it falls through the aperture, and, passing down the channels in the guide plate, reaches the proper tube. The speed is to a certain extent dependent upon the skill of the operator, but averages between 3500 and 4000 per hour. A good compositor can by hand alone distribute as many letters as this. But for the purposes of the composing machine, hand distributed types would have to be set up again, as the composing machine is supplied not from ordinary cases but from tubes of type. In the Fraser distributing machine (fig. 9) the page of matter to be distributed is placed on the upper part of the machine at H, whence by suitable apparatus it is moved line by line towards the separator I in front. The matter is there read by the operator, and as each letter comes in contact with the separator the corresponding key is pressed and the type is conveyed to the guide plate, where a series of switches guide it to its proper compartment in the tray of the composing machine.
Stereotyping, Electrotyping, &c.
The method of reproducing and multiplying letter-press printing surfaces by taking casts of them, or stereotypes, has greatly conduced to the progress of typography,—much more so, indeed, than might be realized by those who are unacquainted with the practical details of the art. Stereotyping (στερ∈ός, fixed or solid; τύπoς, type or forme) is the method of taking casts from a fixed or movable forme; thus, printing from stereotypes is distinguished from typography, in which impressions are taken from movable types. It does not supersede type-founding, but supplements it, for a page of reading matter requires first of all to be set up letter by letter, and then the casts or plates are taken, each of which may be printed from with nearly as much perfection as from the original forme. Hence a printing surface may be reproduced to an almost infinite extent, and the means of production of impressions on the press or machine are increased in proportion to the number of casts taken. It ensures an accurate copy of an original text, whereas in reproduction by resetting the movable types there is a liability to deviation. When only a cast is worked from, any accident may be repaired by taking another cast, and the cost is slight compared with that of composing over again. A smaller quantity of type may be used in an office where this process is used; a portion of a work may be set up, a cast taken, and the types returned to the cases. The plates are more easily stored than movable formes, and are not liable to the danger, as in the latter, of types falling out. Above all, the mould may be bent to any curve required, and a circular cast obtained, which may be fastened round the cylinder of a machine (see infra in regard to rotary printing).
The process of stereotyping, divested of merely technical details, is as follows. From a forme of matter, which may be wholly or in part composed of movable types, a matrix or mould is taken. The original is in rilievo; the mould consequently is in intaglio. From this the stereo plate is cast, and it of course is again in rilievo. This in turn may likewise become an original, and casts may be taken from a plate, or other casts from the same mould. The first books were printed from solid wooden blocks, each of which formed a page. Then came the era of typography, in which these pages were composed, mosaic-like, of movable types. Now has succeeded the period of stereotyping, in which pages formed of single blocks —but of metal, not of wood—are used. The two essential parts are, therefore, the making of the matrix and of the cast, which is composed of an alloy something like that for type metal. The mould may be of plaster of Paris or papier-mâché; the latter being the simplest material, and that almost universally used, need alone be here referred to. The following account of the process, when carried out on the smallest possible scale, is sufficient perhaps to show the general principles of the art. The papier-mâché for the mould, called flong, is made by uniting several sheets of paper with a paste made of wheaten flour, starch, and alum, to which whiting is added. These ingredients are often varied; the general object in using them is to obtain a paste which will stand a high temperature without burning. A sheet of brown paper is laid down on a smooth surface and pasted over; blotting paper is laid on that and pressed down, then pasted over, and a sheet of tissue paper added, which is also pasted, and another sheet of tissue paper placed on the top. This is well smoothed and pressed to give the incorporated material greater firmness and cohesion. Next, to prepare the forme for being moulded, it is surrounded with metal “clumps” of the height of the type, placed close to the matter, and then oiled to prevent the flong sticking to it. The latter is then thoroughly damped, to render it quite plastic. The forme being on a level surface, the flong is laid upon it, and on that a piece of linen. The surface is next well beaten all over with a long-handled brush, till the flong sinks into all the declivities of the forme and receives a deep impression of it. This is a process requiring experience and practice. The linen being removed, a piece of very stout paper is laid on the top, and also beaten down, so as to strengthen the flong, and the moulding is finished. The next point is to dry the mould.
In the most rudimentary method a combined drying and casting press is used. It consists of a flat iron surface, with a lid attached to one end by hinges. Over the surface is a cross-head fitted with a screw; pressure may be exerted on anything placed between, the arrangement being like that of a screw letter-copying press. The cross-head can be moved to one side when it is necessary for the lid to be lifted up. Underneath the press is a series of gas jets, by means of which the bed plate is heated. The press stands on supports, but is attached to them only by an axle, and it can be readily changed from the horizontal to the vertical position. The lid of the box is raised and the forme with the flong upon it placed on the centre of the iron surface. After being covered with a blanket, the lid is screwed down upon the whole, and, the gas being lighted, the forme and mould are heated for a few minutes, after which the lid is raised, the steam evaporates, and the flong, which has now become the matrix, is thoroughly dry. In large stereotyping foundries, after the flong has been well beaten upon the forme, until the impression of the types is plainly seen on the back, it is baked and dried (the forme still underneath) on a long thick iron slab, called a hot chamber, because it is heated from within by steam. The matrix is then removed from the forme, and any superfluous margin cut away or trimmed; after this the matrix is dusted with powdered French chalk and is ready for being cast from. A method has lately come into use for obviating the necessity of keeping the matrix on the type while it is being hardened by drying by heat, whereby the type is injured. The matrix is dried separately, being removed when moist from the forme, as soon as the impression is obtained. It is then placed on a bed of sand heated by gas. The forme is never heated, and there is a great saving of time, because the drying can be done in two minutes. The matrix is laid on the bed of the casting box face upwards, with gauges around it to determine the height or thickness of the cast. The lid is put down and screwed tightly, and the position of the press altered from the horizontal to the upright. The metal is then poured in and the press restored to its former position. The matrix is carefully raised and the plate exposed. It has only to be “trimmed,” the superfluous metal cut away, and the back planed, to be ready for mounting on a block of wood to make it type high.
In stereotyping for the Walter and similar presses the process is as follows. The forme is laid on the table of the moulding machine and the flong placed on it and thoroughly beaten in by hand or passed through a moulding machine, which performs the same operation. The forme is next placed on a heating surface, and when nearly dried the matrix is removed from it and again dried. It is then placed in the casting box, which is curved to the circumference of the cylinder of the press. The box, being on a swivel, is set upright. The metal is now poured in from a ladle and the plate cast. It is allowed to stand a minute and then taken out, still hot, and placed upon a “finishing saddle” of the same circular form as the back of the plate, and secured by clamps and screws. An angular-shaped knife or chisel, fixed in a carriage, is moved by a handle in a semicircular direction across the surface of the plate, in order to remove superfluous portions of metal and to form a bevel whereby the plate can be subsequently clamped on the machine. If necessary the plate may be smoothed at the back by a specially-contrived planing machine. The plate is now ready for being placed on the printing machine. Each single operation can be performed with the utmost possible despatch. If the organization is sufficiently perfect, the time for making a plate, from the moment when the forme comes down from the machine-room to that wherein the perfect plate is set on the machine, need only be about eight minutes.
In newspaper establishments where stereotyping is thus adopted the pages are not all made up simultaneously: some are kept open till the last for the latest telegrams. The moment a page is completed and locked up in its chase it is sent down to the foundry, and as many casts taken as there are printing machines to be set going. One page follows another with rapidity, the first being placed in position on the machine, while the later ones are in the foundry. When all the plates are finished and fixed in their places, six, eight, or ten machines may be simultaneously printing at the rate of nearly 12,000 per hour each. The enormous increase in the circulation of the great daily newspapers would have been impossible but for the extraordinary facilities for rapid production provided by stereotyping. This process is also of special utility to the newspaper printer in the case of telegrams arriving late. In machines which printed from the type, late telegrams could only be inserted by a “stop-press”; that is, the printing was interrupted while the alteration was being made. But, when the papier-mâché casts of the pages have been taken, the type itself is;ed and sent back to the composing room, so that, if later news arrives while the machines are running, the foreman printer alters the page, a fresh cast of it is taken, and a machine started without interrupting the production for a moment. The London evening papers have usually five editions, and for every edition fresh casts are made of one or more of the pages.
Quite recently the substance called celluloid has been introduced instead of the metal referred to previously. A mould is made of yellow oxide of lead and glycerin formed into a semi-fluid paste, which is applied to the surface of the type. The matrix is placed on a powerful press and a heated sheet of celluloid about 3 / 16 of an inch thick is laid on it. When pressure is applied, a perfect facsimile is obtained, and it is ready to be printed from when mounted in the usual way. Whereas a good electrotype from a wood block averages six hours in its production, a cast in celluloid can be got in less than an hour. These blocks are very tough and many thousands more of impressions can be printed from them than from stereotypes without their showing signs of wear. For small stamps india-rubber is used as a stereotyping material, and afterwards vulcanized. These stamps, being flexible, print on rough surfaces which would not take an impression from ordinary stereotypes. With a flexible surface, too, much less pressure is required.
Machines have been invented to do away with the use of types altogether. The principle is to punch the characters successively on some substance which will act like the flong and become a mould from which stereo plates may be cast. In an apparatus recently introduced the flong is a prepared piece of millboard, which is placed in front of the steel punches. The latter are driven into the flong with lightning speed and great accuracy. By turning a handle all the Roman punches are changed to Italic; by another a set of sanserif or other founts comes into play. For setting time-tables and logarithms the apparatus is said to save ninety per cent. over the ordinary system of hand-setting. The obstacle to the more general use of it is the difficulty of correcting errors. In another machine the punches are driven into a block of teak wood. They are cast to thicknesses which are the multiple of a “point”; hence by a simple calculation they may be spaced out to the exact number of points chosen for the length of the line, and every line leaves the machine justified. The block when complete is removed and a stereotype taken, which can be printed as in the ordinary method of typography.
For the reproduction of wood engravings electrotyping has nearly superseded stereotyping, as it produces much better copies. For obtaining plates of type matter it is also better than stereotyping, as many thousands of impressions may be taken without reducing the sharpness of an electro, while ordinary stereotype would be almost worn out by printing a much smaller number. This arises from the superior hardness and toughness of copper, of which the surface of the electro is formed. Electrotyping, however, is costlier and slower.
The forme to be electrotyped is placed upon a level plate, and surrounded with type-high clumps or metal furniture, and then floated with plaster of Paris, which prevents the mould of wax (to be afterwards made) from penetrating too far into the interstices of the spaces. The forme is next brushed with finely powdered blacklead or plumbago. The moulding composition is made of melted wax, with the addition of a little blacklead. This is poured into a shallow metal moulding tray, to which two pieces of stout wire are soldered, in order that it may be afterwards suspended in the depositing trough. After the composition is cooled and set its surface is brushed with blacklead, and it is then ready for moulding. The moulding press may be something like a letter-copying press, or, in a large establishment, may consist of a powerful hydraulic or other press capable of exercising a pressure of many tons. The forme is placed exactly under the centre of the platen, with the moulding tray containing the wax, slightly warm, upon it. An impression is then taken, and the mould afterwards separated from the forme. The mould has next to go through the process of building, that is, heated wax is dropped upon such portions as should be more deeply sunk in the finished electrotype plate, namely, the places where “whites” are to appear in the print. The mould, having been finished, has to be blackleaded, plumbago being a conductor of electricity, while wax is a non-conductor. The material is well brushed in, filling all the interstices of the forme; and the entire surface of the mould must be properly covered, to ensure a perfect deposit of the copper. To facilitate this operation, a blackleading machine is used in large establishments. The forme is placed upon a carriage formed of transverse bars and is moved backwards and forwards by a handle and rounce to bring it under the blacklead brush. After the mould is blackleaded, the back of the moulding pan is coated with wax, to prevent the copper from being deposited upon it. The mould is now quickly immersed in one of the compartments of the battery. The process of depositing a copper solution upon the blackleaded surface of the mould is continued until a solid plate is formed, which, though it is scarcely thicker than a finger nail, being about 1 / 32 inch, forms, when properly backed, the best and most enduring surface for letterpress printing that has been discovered.
The moulding tray containing the mould is hung on the brass rod of the depositing trough facing a plate of copper, and the connexion of the battery made: that is, the mould is attached to one pole of the battery and the plate of copper to the other. The copper, so to speak, is decomposed on the one hand and recomposed on the other: in other words, the current of electricity being complete, and the mould submerged in the sulphate of copper solution, the deposition of copper on the mould at once commences. Here it remains until the deposit is sufficient, the time usually occupied being from 8 to 12 hours, according to the state of the solution and the strength of the batteries. The dynamo-electro machine, which is now employed in large houses, very materially reduces this period; otherwise Smee’s batteries are generally used. When the deposit, or, as it is called, the shell, formed on the wax mould is of proper thickness, it is disengaged from the wax,—the mould being placed with its back on an inclined board, and boiling water poured over the shell, which melts the surface of the wax, except a thin coating, the removal of which is effected by placing the mould and shell on a steam heating table. Thus the wax mould is destroyed, and it is not possible to obtain more than one shell from a mould, whereas the stereotype process enables almost any number of casts to be taken from the same matrix. The shell, being too thin and fragile to be printed from, is next backed, or filled up with metal of a somewhat softer kind than stereo metal. The shell, after being further cleaned, is lowered on to the top of a vessel of molten type metal; and, when the solder previously used to unite the copper and the metal has fused, the latter is poured over it in a molten state until it is covered. The plate is washed, dried, and polished, the back roughly planed to a surface parallel to the front, the edges squared, and all imperfections made good. The thickness of a plate is usually a pica or ⅙th inch. It is mounted as an ordinary stereotype plate. Within the last few years the process has been greatly facilitated by the employment of specially contrived apparatus, and illustrations can be produced in three hours from the time the mould is made. Curved electros are produced, as well as curved stereos, for use in rotary printing. Facing with nickel by the electroplating process is now largely adopted for hardening stereotypes and electrotypes and rendering them more durable. This process also prevents the deterioration of such plates by the action of the acids or other chemical reagents often present in printing inks, such as cyanide of potassium in red ink and nitric acid in some blue inks.
Polytyping is a method invented in France about the end of the 18th century, but now seldom practised in the United Kingdom. The apparatus somewhat resembles a pile-driver. It has two upright guides about six feet high, and a pulley at the top, which elevates by means of a rope a heavy plate, on which the matrix is placed in an inverted position. At the foot of the machine there is a substantial iron bed, upon which the operator places some molten metal. He then pulls the rope until the matrix, with its weight attached, is elevated to the top of the machine, when it is suddenly allowed to fall. The result is similar to that made on a medal by means of a die,—a perfect reproduction of the matrix in relief, which is mounted on a metal stand to type height. The results are excellent, as the plastic metal is forced into the finest lines of the matrix. Duplicates of a block can be thus produced more rapidly than by the ordinary stereotype process; and another advantage is that the intaglio parts are much deeper,—a point of some importance in printing. The matrix may be made from the block by the electrotyping process.
Substitutes for Wood-Engraving.
Formerly the only available method of obtaining illustrations which could be printed on the letter-press in conjunction with type was that of wood - engraving. At the present time a number of comparatively new processes are in operation, in which the engraving is done almost automatically by the adoption of chemical processes and the well-known principles of photography. Engravings of this kind are called in the trade process blocks, or sometimes zinco-types, owing to the metal of which they are formed. There is space here for only the barest possible account of the processes.
In the first method, which is sometimes called typo-etching, the drawing is made with ordinary lithographic ink on stone, or on paper and transferred to stone. It is then re-transferred to a plate of polished zinc by the ordinary lithographic process. Zinc is employed on account of its cheapness and its ready solubility in the acids used for etching. It has properties similar to those of the lithographic stone in taking up the ink and the water. The transfer is made to adhere to the plate by being passed through a lithographic press; the paper is then stripped off; and the whole of the ink is left on the plate, which is inked up as a litho stone with a view to render the lines as solid and strong as possible to resist the acid. The covering of the lines is strengthened by dusting powdered asphalt or some other suitable material over the plate, which is warmed just sufficiently to incorporate the asphalt with the ink. The plate is next placed in a bath of acid (its back and other parts, where the acid is not required to act, being protected by varnish), in order that the unprotected parts, or those which are to form the whites of the finished picture, may be dissolved away. In order to prevent the acid eating not only straight down into the plate but on the sides of the furrows it forms, and thus undermining them, an ingenious device has been adopted. As soon as the etching has proceeded to a very slight depth, the plate is removed from the bath, washed, and heated. The ink and other protective medium are thus melted and run down the sides of the little furrows formed by the acids and thereby protect them from further action. Inking and dusting with resinous material are repeated, and etching resumed, until the depressions of the block have been brought to the proper depth. The etching is carried on in troughs to which a rocking motion is given, so that the acid flows to and fro in waves over the surface, and little bubbles of gas, &c., are carried away. Where large spaces of white occur, the metal is cleared away by a drill; after the block has been mounted type high, it is ready for the printer.
This process is only available for the production of “line blocks,” i.e ., those in which the original drawing is done in lines or dots, as for an ordinary woodcut. The highest achievement of process blocks has been the production of tone blocks, which may be made direct from oil-paintings, water-colours, photographs, drawings in chalk, wash, pencil, &c., or indeed from anything from which a photographic negative can be taken. The exact nature of the processes is a trade secret, but the rationale is given in Mr Truman Wood’s Modern Methods of Illustrating Books (London, 1887), to which we are indebted for the following details. The problem is to translate, as it were, the light and shade of the negative into solid outlines of black and white. The shades must be lines of various breadths or of various distances apart, or spots or grain of various degrees of fineness or closeness. In a surfaceblock any part that touches the paper prints, and any part that does not touch the paper does not leave any mark at all. The photographic image is continuous: there are no outlines in it, the picture being formed of graduated tints or shades, ranging from the white of the paper up to the darkest colour that the process employed can give. To make a block for letter-press printing the graduated tints of the photograph have to be broken up into stipple or grain, and it must be a stipple closest in the shadows, gradually becoming more open through the range of the intermediate tones, and vanishing altogether in the highest lights. To describe the ingenious methods adopted to secure this end would involve an account of several photographic operations which would be out of place here. In one process, perfected by Meisenbach of Munich in 1882, grained negatives are produced by placing a transparent screen, on which a suitable grain is imprinted, in contact with the negative or the positive to be copied, and then photographing the two together. The negative is transferred to a plate of suitable material, which is graved or etched in the usual manner, to form a typographic block. Another device is to print from the original negative upon a piece of silk, the threads of which break up the picture into a regular grain. The positive on the silk is then photographed and a printing block made. These blocks require from their very low relief delicate and careful printing, but are made to give excellent results.
A process of typographic etching has been invented by Messrs Dawson, in which the design is drawn with an etching needle on a brass plate covered with a wax etching ground, in the same manner as for an ordinary etching. The metal is therefore bared at the lines, which are separated by ridges and spaces of wax. These spaces are strengthened by the addition of melted wax, which runs up to the edges of the lines, but does not run over on to them as might be expected, filling them up. The supply is continued until the spaces between the lines, representing the whites of the finished print, have been raised to a height sufficient to give the necessary relief, when an electrotype is taken. This electrotype forms the printing surface.
Shanks’s process is a device for producing pictures simply by the use of mechanism, and is an application of the eidograph. The plate to be drawn upon is moved under the drawing implement, which is a rapidly revolving cutter, and the plate on its carrier is mounted on the end of a series of levers in the same way as the slide rest of a lathe, so as to have motion in two directions, one at right angles to the other, and consequently by a combination of the two to have motion in any direction in the same plane. If a plate of a suitable substance, such as hardened plaster of Paris, be mounted on the carrier, and the bracing point at the other end of the lever be moved over the lines of a drawing, the cutter will plough a little furrow, which will follow these lines. When the plate is finished, a stereotype is taken from it and forms the printing surface. The lines of the casts are remarkably strong owing to the conformation of the furrow of the mould, and they can be printed on fast rotary machines. The weather charts given in some newspapers are produced by this process. A block with the recurring outlines being made, plates are moulded from it, so that the details alone have to be separately cut upon future plates. Mr Shanks’s method is remarkably simple and expeditious, and the results are economical and trustworthy.
Press - Work and Presses.
The characteristic of printing, as already pointed out, is that the pigment—the ink—with which the printing surface of the type is coated is transferred to the paper or other material by pressure. The manner in which this pressure is exerted gives rise to two classes of machinery,—those in which the platen and the cylinder respectively are employed. After the paper is placed on the type, in the one case a flat plate of iron moves parallel to the forme and comes in contact with it, causing the impression on the paper, while in the other case a cylinder revolves over the surface, which travels in gearing with the cylinder.
Space does not permit of any sketch, however slight, of the origin and progress of type-printing machinery. We can only refer to what may be regarded as representative appliances in present use. In America all kinds of apparatus for printing are called “presses”; in England, however, an appliance of a more automatic character than the hand-press is usually called “a machine.” As the hand-press is now almost obsolete, this distinction will probably be abandoned, and the shorter and more expressive word “press” be applied to all. Venturing to adopt this suggestion, we may say that of platen presses there are the hand-press, the treadle platen press, and the steam or other power-driven press.
Fig. 10 is a view of the Albion press. It is wholly of iron and steel. Although this press is nearly superseded, it is desirable to point out its component parts, as they indicate the general principles on which all typographic machinery is based. The flat plane on which the type is laid is called the bed of the press; the other flat plane which moves vertically and presses the paper on the type is the platen. These are the two essential parts of the press. The platen is perfectly smooth and level on its under surface, in order to give the whole of the type forme an equable pressure. It is mounted in a strong iron frame, with a crosspiece or head. The platen is propelled by a piston, which moves up and down. The power is gained by bringing an inclined bar of steel perpendicular to the direct line of pressure, and in doing so the piston is forced down. This steel bar is the chill, shaped like an elbow. At one end is a bar or handle which, on being pulled towards the operator, straightens the chill or brings it into the vertical position. At the sides are guide-plates fixed into the frame, to preserve the parallelism of the platen, for the slightest vibration or lateral movement would prevent a clear sharp impression being taken. There are appropriate appliances, such as a helical spring, fixed on the head of the press, whereby the platen raises itself when the pressure is not required. In order to bring the forme readily under the platen, and to withdraw it so that it may be inked and the sheet to be printed placed in position, the table is mounted on a carriage, that runs on two rails by turning a handle connected with two endless bands. The paper is fixed to certain marks on the tympan, a kind of metal frame hinged on to the carriage, when it is in a sloping position. This ensures the paper being printed in the exact place required. The tympan, over which calico or parchment is stretched, is double, and contains within it a pad of paper or a piece of blanket, to moderate the force of the impression of the platen. To it is hinged another metal frame, the frisket, which is covered with paper, cut to correspond with the shape of the type forme on the press. The ink is applied with a cylinder or roller, which revolves in an iron frame, and is covered about an inch thick with a composition of glue and treacle or of glycerin or other substance. The ink is spread out with a palette knife or similar appliance on a table adjoining the press, and by repeatedly revolving the roller over it, it becomes coated with an extremely thin film of ink. The roller is then moved over the surface of the forme on the press, until sufficient ink has been transferred to it. This is called rolling, and is a very important part of press-work, for if inefficiently performed there will be too much ink on the impression, or even blotches, which are called monks, or the print will be too pale or grey in places, such imperfections being called friars. The sheet of paper to be printed is next laid on the tympan, to pins serving as guides. The frisket is folded down on the tympan, which is in turn folded down on the forme with the right hand, while with the left the handle is turned and the press carriage brought under the platen. The bar is pulled by the right hand, the handle turned the reverse way with the left hand, the carriage brought out again, the tympan raised, the frisket opened, and the printed sheet removed, the tympan being ready to receive another white sheet. The frisket serves, among other things, to keep the edges and parts of the sheet not required to be printed from being discoloured by contact with the ink or the sides of the forme, and to aid in steadying the sheet when the tympan is depressed and in the removal of the sheet when it is raised. Such is a bare outline of the method of printing at a hand-press,—one necessarily imperfect from a technical point of view, but sufficient to indicate the essentials of the operation.
Another press which has been much used is the Columbian,—a name given to it by its inventor, Clymer, an American. The power is gained by an ingenious combination of levers. Two of these are connected by a rod with the bar handle, which is in itself a lever. The platen is attached to the head by a strong iron bolt, the descent being made steady and regular by vertical guides. It is counterbalanced by a powerful lever or beam, having an adjustable weight shaped like an eagle, which raises it automatically. In the bar handle is a screw stop by means of which the length of the lever rod can be adjusted and its pressure, or the pull, perfectly regulated.
Nine distinct processes have thus to be gone through in order to print one side of a sheet of paper at a hand-press :—(1) inking the roller, (2) inking the forme, (3) laying the sheet on the tympan, (4) folding down the tympan, (5) running in the forme under the platen, (6) taking the impression by depressing the platen, and then immediately afterwards allowing it to raise itself by means of the counterpoise or spring, (7) running out the forme, (8) lifting the tympan and frisket, and (9) removing the sheet. The object of successive improvers of the printing press has been to render the apparatus more automatic, or to substitute for it a “machine” that will reduce these nine operations to the minimum. In modern machines this has been effected to the extent of rendering necessary only three of them—(1) laying on or “feeding” the sheets, (2) applying the motive power, (3) taking off or delivering the sheets; and rotary machines both feed and deliver themselves automatically. Nearly all cylinder machines have a delivery apparatus, and quite recently an appliance for the automatic feeding to them of single sheets of paper has been invented.
With respect to the platen press we notice first that which is capable of being driven by a rotating shaft or wheel. It should be observed that the adoption of the rotatory principle was essential to the acceleration of speed. This was recognized by the projector of the machine press, William Nicholson, and by Frederick Koenig, who first brought the invention into use and constructed a practical press. The essential arrangements of every machine are four, their respective objects being (1) to feed in the paper, (2) to ink the forme, (3) to print the sheet, and (4) to deliver or take it off.
The treadle platen press is the simplest of machine presses capable of being worked by a wheel. When other motive power is not available it is driven by a treadle, like that of a lathe. The type forme is usually secured by clamps on an almost vertical bed (fig. 11), and the platen rocks backwards and forwards, being thus brought in contact with the type on the bed. Just before the impression is taken, the two surfaces are momentarily parallel. The inking is effected by small composition rollers, adjusted in a roller carrier swinging on a pivot. The rollers receive ink from a “fountain” or duct of ink at the top of the machine, below which is an arrangement, such as a revolving disk, for distributing the ink. The constant motion of the rollers and of the revolving ink disk is equivalent to the manual movements of the operator who “rolls” at the hand-press. The rollers are carried by self-acting appliances over the face of the forme, and return to the ink table to be replenished with ink, after which the impression takes place. The sheet to be printed is placed in proper position on the platen, which is covered with paper or parchment, and is secured there during the movement of the platen by movable fingers called grippers. The platen on advancing brings the paper in contact with the type forme; after the printing it returns to its original position, when the sheet is removed and another sheet adjusted ready for being printed. The treadle platen press is only adapted for work on paper of small size, up to half sheet demy, but within this limit it is greatly superior to the hand-press. If sufficiently strong and well built, it gives a far more powerful impression, and it occupies about a sixth of the space. Its great merit, however, is its superior speed. The hand-press, when worked by two men, one rolling the types and one pulling the handle of the press, produces only about 250 impressions per hour. The treadle press is worked by a boy, who has only to depress the treadle with his foot, and lay on and take off the sheets with his hands, and he can work at the rate of more than 1000 per hour. The treadle press is also superior to the hand-press in the uniformity of its results, since the automatic inking ensures a greater regularity in the colour of the impressions than with the old hand-inking process.
The ordinary or ‘ ‘ double” platen press was, in principle, very similar to the hand-press. It was about 13 feet long. The platen, in the centre, was massive, as the machine printed sheets as large as double demy, and it had a perpendicular motion, being guided in grooves and worked by a connecting rod fixed to a cross beam and crank, which acquired its motion from the main shaft. In other respects the machine differed from the hand-press in having two type beds or coffins and two inking tables arranged at the ends of the carriage, which travelled backwards and forwards, being worked by a drum underneath. The paper to be printed was laid to marks on the frisket, and this was hinged on the tympan, which in turn was fastened to the end of the coffin by hinges or joints. The frisket and tympan were opened by running up bars at suitable positions. After a newly printed sheet was removed, another was placed on the frisket, which as the carriage moved ran down the bars and closed on the sheet, which then received its impression. This arrangement was dangerous to the boys who had to lay on the sheets.
Formerly it was thought that the very finest printing could not be done by a cylinder impressing a forme in the progress of its reciprocating motion, for that was liable to slur or blur the impression. Hence platen presses were employed for the best work. Of recent years engineers have brought the cylinder press to such perfection that there is not the slightest danger, under the superintendence of a capable man, of any slur. Working quite as well as the platen press, the cylinder press is enormously quicker and more productive; it requires less driving power; and much better inking is obtained, which is all-important for fine woodcut printing. Accordingly, for even the best illustrated book-work, the platen power-press is now almost entirely superseded by the cylinder.
Cylinder machines are of two kinds,—(1) presses in which the type is on a flat plane and (2) those in which the type, or more correctly the impressing surface, is cylindrical. The first are called cylinder presses, the second—a development of the first—the rotary web presses.
The simplest kind of mechanical press is called the single-cylinder or one-sided machine, which has been recently brought to the highest state of perfection by Mr Samuel Bremner. It is generally used for commercial and fine book-work on one side of the paper. There are different varieties of cylinder machines, distinguished by trade-marks or the names of their makers; but the general principles, apart from details, are practically identical. There is a strong cast-iron frame, with bearings to carry the cylinder, which runs across the machine transversely, nearly in the centre. The cylinder revolves by gearing connected with a main shaft, which also works the other moving parts. This shaft is turned by a wheel for hand or steam power.
The table for carrying the type is also provided with a flat inking board of wood or iron, used for distributing the ink. It travels backwards and forwards, that is, with a reciprocating motion. At one end of the machine is the feeding-board, on which the pile of paper to be printed is placed. The layer-on places each sheet against metal marks, consisting of rectangular pieces of steel or brass mounted on a bar underneath, which rises and falls according as the sheet is being laid to and taken away from them. When placed against these marks, ensuring correct “lay,” the sheet is seized by grippers or light metal claws fixed on a bar inside the cylinder. These clutch the sheet and carry it forward round the cylinder, which in its revolution brings it forcibly in contact with the type forme moving forward underneath, when the impression is effected. Immediately after the grippers release their hold, and the sheets are removed singly by an attendant called a taker-off, or by a mechanical automatic arrangement called a flyer, and deposited on the taking-off board. At the end of the machine farthest from the laying-on board is fixed a trough, which contains the ink; it is fitted with the dud roller of cast-iron, which revolves by means of a band or ratchet-wheel and pawl. A flat bar or knife with a thin edge is set up against the metal roller lengthways by adjusting screws, which regulate the passage of the ink, and permit a thin film to pass the knife. A composition roller, called a vibrator, is fixed underneath, which takes off the ink that has already been deposited on the duct roller and leaves a ridge or strip of it on the inking slab. As the carriage returns, this strip of ink is distributed on the inking table by rollers placed diagonally across the machine. The diagonal position gives them a waving motion; hence they are called wavers. The inking of the forme is done by another set of rollers called inkers, placed near the impression cylinder. The inking rollers receive their ink from what is distributed on the table and coat the type while it is passing underneath them.
Thus the nine operations of the hand-press requisite to print one impression are greatly reduced. The bed carrying the type to and fro from the point of impression moves mechanically, superseding the running in and out of the carriage by the rounce and handle of the hand-press. The inking table, although independent, forms part of the type table, and some of the rollers distribute and others ink, this again being done mechanically and without a second operator. The platen and the tympan, as well as the levers by which the impression is given, are in effect combined in the cylinder, which rotates by gearing, the pressure being applied during the motion of the table itself. The laying-on of the sheet upon the tympan and folding it down on the forme are superseded by the presentation of the paper to the grippers; and the taking-off of the sheet after raising the tympan is superseded by removing it when released by the grippers and laying it on the adjacent table,— both immeasurably easier operations and done much more rapidly. Indeed both laying-on and taking-off may be done automatically, as is explained below. The result is that, while two men are required to print a sheet of book-work on one side of the paper at the speed of 250 an hour at the hand-press, machines of this class worked by one operator print about 1200 per hour. Even this comparison does not convey a complete idea of the enormously increased productiveness of the cylinder machine over that of the press. By the latter, the largest sheet practically that could be printed was double demy, 23 × 35 inches, the superficies of which is 8 ∙5 square inches; single-cylinder machines are now made to print eight sheet double crown, the superficies of which is 4800 square inches. These sheets being afterwar<ls cut up into double crown sheets, the productiveness of the machine to the press would be, per hour, about 8000 to 250.
As already mentioned, a self-acting feeding apparatus has been invented for supplying single sheets to cylinder machines. The pile of paper is laid on a feeding board or table, between gauges. A pneumatic tube takes up one sheet at a time; it is then run down tapes to a point at which india-rubber fingers bring it to the side lay of the machine, and it is printed with perfect accuracy of register. Once started, the machine works automatically, and the services of both layer-on and taker-off are dispensed with.
We may now describe that class of machines by which the paper is printed on both sides, or perfected, during one passage through the machine. The Applegath and Cowper or ordinary machine has two impression cylinders, having a continuous rotary motion towards each other. The frame is necessarily long, usually about 15 feet, and the width of the machine about 5 feet, these dimensions depending upon the size of the sheet to be printed. The table or carriage is double, containing two beds for the two formes of type, to impress the two sides of the paper, and two distributing tables for the ink. At each end is a complete roller apparatus, consisting of duct, duct roller, vibrator, and wavers. Close to the large cylinders on each side are the inking rollers. The table has a reciprocating motion, as in a single-cylinder machine. The distinctive feature is the ingenious manner in which the sheets are printed first on one side and then on the other. This is effected by carrying them over cylinders and drums by means of tapes. The pile of sheets stands on a high table placed at one end. The sheet is fed into the apparatus and led round an entry drain; thence it is carried round the large right-hand impressing cylinder, and underneath this, on the table, which is moving at the same speed as the cylinder, is the inner forme properly inked. The paper thus receives an impression on one side. It is next led up to the right-hand drum, which it passes over, the printed side of the sheet being then downwards. Continuing, it is brought under the second or left-hand drum and on to the left-hand impression cylinder, which it passes with the printed side still downwards, or next to the cylinder, exposing the other side to the type of the outer forme on the table underneath. The drams have thus reversed the position of the paper: the side which was outside when passing the first forme is inside when passing the second forme, which accordingly prints the sheet on the opposite or blank side. The sheet is finally run out by the tapes and delivered in the space between the large cylinders, seized by a taking-off boy, and deposited on a table or taking-off board. This press is known as the dropbar perfecting machine, owing to a peculiarity of the arrangement by which the paper is conveyed into the tapes. In front of the feeding table is a rod or bar of steel, along which are fitted several metal disks or bosses about half an inch thicker than the bar itself. These can be shifted, by means of small screws, to any position along the rod to suit the size of the sheet to be printed. To this bar is fixed a short arm, with a pulley at the end, which works round a wheel attached to a cam with a dip. Every time the pulley drops into the dip, the bar descends upon the paper, which is laid to marks at the front; and the bar, possessing a rotary motion from the tapes, runs the sheet between a roller and a small drum on to the inner forme cylinder, as already stated. Other kinds of machines are distinguished as the web, having a web or a series of broad tapes which lie on the laying-on board and are fastened to a small drum underneath it. The drum has a series of small cogs, and when it is forced forward it moves the web or tapes in the same direction. The sheet, having been laid to a back mark on the tapes, is propelled between two revolving rollers and thus taken into the machine.
There are several distinct types of perfecting presses in use, but we can only notice one or two. In the Anglo-French machine, which was in-vented in England but improved in France, grippers are used instead of tapes and the intermediate drums for conveying the sheet from one cylinder to the other. The cylinders are on a level, but alternately rise and fall, allowing the sheet to clear the forme. Quite recently a singlecylinder perfecting press has been invented. The cylinder is double the usual size and has two printing surfaces and a double set of grippers. Two sheets are printed at each revolution, the first being the white paper and the second the partly printed sheet which has immediately preceded it. The sheet is fed in as to an ordinary single side press, printed on one side, taken off, reversed, again gripped, and perfected, when it is automatically delivered on the table.
It has been mentioned that
250 sheets or a token per hour, printed on one side only, represent the work of two men at the hand-press. Two youths at a perfecting machine will complete from 1200 to 2000 copies per hour, equal to 4000 impressions on one side only,—an increase of about sixteen fold. This, however, does not represent the whole of the superiority of these machines. Sheets much larger than double crown (20 × 30 inches) can hardly be worked at a press; the machine perfects a sheet nearly double this size—50 × 40 or four royal, so that the proportionate product of the machine to the press is about as 32 to 1.
Perfecting machines are not so much used for book-work as formerly. The single-cylinder machine has been brought to such perfection, and is so superior in its inking arrangements, that printers prefer it. In America nearly all machines are one-sided. For newspapers of limited circulation, however, the perfecting machine is well adapted. Complete copies of a journal are produced as soon as the machine is started; extra copies can be worked off while newsagents are waiting; and a number of sheets need not be printed off on one side to be completed when a sudden demand arises.
Fig. 13 shows a new form of French perfecting machine for printing book - work, the Marinoni com bined perfecting and duplex single-cylinder machine. The improvement in this machine over the perfecting two-cylinder machine described above consists in the alteration of some mechanical parts, so that the same machine can be used for printing sheets either on both sides or on one side only. It therefore serves the purpose of two single - cylinder machines or of one perfecting machine, the change from one to the other being very simple.
The rotary press differs essentially from the cylinder machine. In the former the printing surface and the impressing surface both rotate continuously, and the paper,—not cut up into single sheets, but carried between the two cylinders in a roll or web, like a ribbon, —receives successively an impression on each side, after which it is cut up into sheets of the proper size and folded as it is run out, the sheets being deposited on a table ready for removal.
As representative of this class of machines we may take the Walter press, whose mechanical arrangement is shown in fig. 14. The paper to be printed from, a continuous web about 8000 yards in length, is wound on a small roller at P. It is passed over a tension roller, and then over the damping cylinders TV, TV, and thoroughly wetted on both sides. The damping cylinders are hollow, and contain sponges from which the water is distributed by centrifugal force, the outside of the cylinder being covered with blankets. The paper next passes on to the printing cylinders T, T', on which the printing surface—not composed of movable types but of stereo plates—is fixed, and to the impression cylinders I, Ï. The printing cylinders contain each the plate in curvilinear shape, constituting the forme for one side of the paper. The web is led between the printing and the impression cylinders, as shown by the dotted line. After being printed on one side by T, it travels round I and receives an impression on the other side from T', thus being “perfected.” It then passes on to the cutting cylinders K, K, one of which has a serrated knife, which enters the paper, and on the application of tension divides the web, causing the peculiar saw-like edge seen in copies of journals printed on rotary machines. The paper is next carried in over tapes to the point where the complete severance takes place. Soon after they encounter a pendulous frame, which delivers them in two piles on to the tables x , x, whence they are removed. There is an ink supply trough a, which is connected with the distributing rollers by a revolving metal roller b. The distributing rollers of metal are marked f, g, h, i, and the rollers which ink the forme, made of the ordinary composition, are marked k, k.
The average rate of speed of the Walter press is 12,000 per hour, the sheets being printed on both sides. In this apparatus everything is automatic: there is self-feeding and self-delivery, the web of paper at one end being transformed into properly printed single sheets at the other. The machine requires only one man to superintend its general working, including the replacing of the web when printed and the removal of the successive piles of sheets. In respect of speed, if the perfecting machine is to the hand-press as 32 to 1, the rotary will be to the hand-press as 96 to 1. The Walter press, requiring a space of only about 14 feet by 5, is not more remarkable for its speed and economy than for its simplicity of construction and its compactness. And the same remark applies to several other machines, such as the Victory, the Hoe, and the Prestonian, which have since come into use. Their general appearance is that of a collection of small cylinders or rollers, through which the paper seems to fly at railway speed, issuing forth in two descending torrents of sheets accurately cut into lengths. Without such machinery the prodigious issues of some of the morning journals would not be possible. One daily paper averages a circulation of more than a quarter of a million. This enormous number of sheets are printed in about four hours, owing to the type matter being stereotyped and placed on several presses.
Printing from webs of paper instead of single sheets will probably be adopted in the future for all newspapers and even books of large circulation. Hand-feeding is limited by the ability of the operator to lay the sheets on the feeding-board with the necessary accuracy. One chief obstacle to the more general adoption of rotary printing is the expense of stereotyping the type formes. Although a machine has been constructed in which movable types can be placed round the periphery of an impressing cylinder, it cannot compete with the Walter and other presses using stereo plates. The problem of printing directly from flat formes of ordinary types, as well as from stereotypes, with paper supplied in the roll, is one that may be commended to engineers. The saving in stereotyping in many cases would be very considerable; but, even where this is not an object, the readiness and ease with which the type could be manipulated would ensure for such an apparatus admission into offices where the large rotaries of the present day are inadmissible. It would also enable illustrated journals to be printed from the web. The pictures introduced into some of our daily journals are very rude when compared with those in periodicals printed on flatbed machines. This is owing partly to the distortion that arises when the cast from a flat block is accommodated to a curved surface, partly to the fact that stereotyping does not give the fine and delicate reproduction that electrotyping supplies, and partly to the imperfect inking powers of the machines. Quite recently a plan has been patented whereby curved electrotypes of pictures can be fastened to blank or depressed portions of an ordinary curved stereo plate; but the method is not always practicable. With a flat-bed machine the forme to be printed from might be of a composite kind,—partly movable types, partly stereotype, and partly electrotype. One difficulty of constructing a web printing machine with a flat bed is that of turning the sheet so that it may be printed almost simultaneously on both sides. It would have to be reversed by the continued rotary movement of the cylinder. This, however, is quite within the limits of practicability, and experiments are now being made to devise a machine with this feature.
For about three centuries after the invention of printing the formes were inked by leather balls. When machine presses were introduced, their earliest inventor tried to use cylinders covered with leather; but the plan was most unsatisfactory, until a subsequent inventor adopted a composition of glue and treacle, which was cast into cylinders having an inner “stock” of metal or wood. For about half a century this composition was used exclusively for both hand and machine presses. Since then glycerin has been introduced for roller making. Hansard’s recipe, in use when the 8th edition of the present work was issued, was—glue 4 parts, treacle 12 parts, Paris white 1 part. But a much better composition is now formed of glue 10 parts, sugar 10 parts, and glycerin 12 parts. The glycerin has the property of always keeping the roller moist and soft, while the tendency of glue and treacle is to dry and harden. A glycerin roller lasts much longer than one of glue and treacle.
Printing ink has peculiar qualities. It is required to change from the soft adhesive state in which it is applied to the type to that of a perfectly hard and dry substance after being transferred to the paper. This change of condition must be under control, and when air is excluded the ink should keep in good order any length of time. During its application to the type its solidification should be as slow as possible, and unaccompanied by the emission of any unpleasant or deleterious odour. It ought not to affect the rollers, and, having been applied to the paper, its action should be confined to a very slight penetration, just sufficient to prevent its detachment without injuring the surface of the paper. It must dry into a hard, inodorous, and unalterable solid. The ingredients of ink are burnt linseed or other oil, resin, and occasionally soap, with various colouring matters; that for black ink is usually lamp black, but charcoal and other cheaper materials are occasionally introduced. Ink is removed from types and blocks by detergents, such as potash and pearl ash; benzine is also well adapted for the purpose.
Colour Printing.
The apparatus previously described is intended for monochrome printing, whatever be the shade of the ink. When two colours or more have to be printed in one composition, there must be a separate type forme or separate engraving, and a separate printing, for each. Many attempts have been made to print several colours simultaneously by dividing the trough or manipulating the rollers. All these have been more or less unsuccessful, with the exception of a press invented by Mr W. Conisbee, which prints from type formes in two colours. In construction it is somewhat similar to the ordinary single-cylinder machine, but is provided with two sets of inking apparatus, including ductor, wavers, and inkers, each of which acts totally independent of the rest. The cylinder is placed in the centre of the machine and makes two continuous revolutions, giving an impression for each colour. There are two type formes, each containing only the lines to be worked in one of the colours. These are in two beds adjoining one another, and, the circumference of the cylinder being equal to the length of one bed, one colour is printed by the first revolution and the other by the second. The sheet is thus printed twice without being released from the grippers, whereby perfect register is ensured. The speed is slow, averaging 300 to 400 complete impressions per hour.
The method by which the beautiful coloured supplements issued occasionally with illustrated newspapers are printed may be slightly referred to. A copy of the artist’s painting is first of all made, on a scale regulated by the size of the reproduction. This being supplied to the engraver, an outline or key block is made and proofs pulled. It is now necessary to determine the tones of colour to be used,—a process demanding great experience. The key block will, if printed first, afford a guide for the registration of the subsequent printings; sometimes, however, that is reserved for a later stage. The colours on which the subsequent printings are done must be of a transparent nature. The blocks are sometimes produced by the typographic etching process, which gives a softness, delicacy, and variety unattainable by the graver. The blending of the colours is the most delicate task the printer has to undertake. A large picture is often printed in ten or more workings, some of them in their turn intensifying and bringing previous colour workings into stronger relief, others giving shape and form to the picture. Almost to the end of the process, however, the picture will want vitality; its outlines will be hard and bare, or vague and undefined, according to the sequence of the colours. Another working may give grey tones where wanted, and may increase the depth and transparency of various parts. A deep flesh working may have a marked effect on the development; and, near the close of the series, if the entire colouring is found to be too warm, it may be corrected by over-printing very nearly the whole subject. Chromo-typography has undoubtedly made great strides during the past twenty years, its best results being shown in the coloured prints for illustrated journals. For the production of pictures for commercial and artistic purposes chromo-lithography is generally resorted to on account of its relative economy. In lithography for typographic purposes the line has to be cut and the space on both sides removed so as to leave the line alone to be charged with the ink, or the white space has to be etched away with an acid. The printing of isolated points too is easily effected from a stone, whereas most minute labour is necessary to engrave them. Typographic etching has here, however, been of great assistance. The differences of printing surface caused by the colours are met and overcome by the lithographic stone with great facility, even when the spaces are largest and most uneven; it is quite the contrary in regard to typography, wherein the work has to be charged with ink to a greater extent according to its size, and the quantity of ink requisite varies with the fineness of the strokes and of their distance apart. Owing to this we see in most letter-press polychromatic prints a deficiency of transparency, of half-tints, of depth of ground, and of general harmony. Even if it were possible to make chromo - typography as easy as chromo - lithography, there would still be the obstacle of its very much greater cost, owing to the expense of the engraving and of the casts from the key block. In chromo-lithography the designer can repeat the designs for the different stones by a process that costs almost nothing. Also in the process of multiplying the blocks the deviation in the register of the successive colours is practically unavoidable. In lithography the surface to be printed is nearly level; hence the sheet is not shifted and twisted or stretched in places, as it is in typography, owing to the alternate closeness and absence of contact between the sheets and the raised and depressed surface of the block. Whatever success the letter-press method has attained of late is owing to the invention of electrotyping and process blocks, and to the improvement of machinery. For to print these pictures enormous strength and rigidity, and the most perfect arrangements for securing register, are absolutely essential.
Recent Changes.
We will now give a cursory glance at the changes that have been effected during the last twenty-five years in the processes and the products of the art of printing. That these have been of a most drastic kind may be gathered from a comparison of the appliances figured and described in the 8th or the previous editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica with those referred to above. The hand-press has been almost completely superseded by the machine press. Cylindrical impression has displaced platen impression, and the finest book-work and woodcut work are done on a cylinder press. In book-work, indeed, other significant changes have taken place. Whereas formerly it was deemed essential that the paper should be damped before printing, in order to get a delicate and perfect impression, some of the finest books and periodicals are now printed on dry paper, highly calendered, even the illustrated journals and some of the evening papers being so worked. Then, it was thought necessary for the safety of the type to interpose a thick soft blanket between it and the pressing surface, whether cylinder or platen; now, it is found equally safe, and far more conducive to a good impression, to make the packing as thin and hard as possible. Then, fine woodcuts were “brought up” by the use of many “overlays” and “underlays” to correct inequalities in the surface of the blocks and emphasize some of the parts; now, although the art of “making ready’’ has been brought to great perfection, the fewer and thinner the overlays employed the better. And it may not be irrelevant to point out that the printing of woodcuts has improved in the same degree as the engraving of them.
Perhaps, however, the most remarkable change is that made in newspaper printing. The highest achievement mentioned in the article “Printing” in the 8th edition of this work was the six-cylinder Hoe machine. The makers of that apparatus subsequently contrived machines of eight and ten cylinders. But they have now been wholly superseded by the rotary presses on the Walter principle. The hand feeding-in of single sheets is entirely done away with, and all newspapers of considerable circulation are printed from long reels of paper, uncut, as originally made at the paper-mill. The maximum number of copies which a machine of this class would print with ten feeding attendants and four taking away attendants would be 8000 an hour. For folding the 8000 printed copies five folding machines and at least two attendants would be required to keep pace with the printing machines. Thus nineteen men were required to print and fold 8000 copies per hour with the best machines as late as 1870. With a rotary machine doing the same or a larger quantity of work only two men are required. The cost for printing and folding 1000 copies by the Hoe machine was estimated at 1s. 4d., while with the rotary it is only about 2d. Hence the saving of wages to a newspaper issuing 200,000 copies a day on 313 working days would be nearly £3700 in a year. This, in connexion with improvements in paper, or rather the discovery of cheaper materials, bringing the price of “news” down to about 2d. per lb—one quarter of its price a very few years ago—accounts for much of the enterprise of modern journalism. For some time after the abolition of the paper duty there was a loss on the circulation of a large-sized penny journal; now there is a considerable gain. Lately rotary presses for small jobbing work have been constructed; and before long the rotary principle will probably be rendered available for illustrated periodicals and fine book-work, printed from webs or reels of paper instead of single sheets. Great improvements have also been made in type-founding, and the Roman and Italic founts now used by English printers are equal to those of any country in the world. It is sometimes said that English éditions de luxe are not equal to those of the French, and that this is owing to the inferiority of the founders. This is, however, not quite true: some of the best French books are printed from English types or from types cut in the English manner. It is also the fashion to compare modern printed books with those of the Elzevirs and Baskerville. Yet as a matter of fact their best faces have been reproduced with perfect success by modern founders. From a mechanical point of view the impression given by the best machine presses to-day is undoubtedly superior to that of the hand-presses of the 17th and 18th centuries. If modern books suffer in any respect on comparison with those of former times, which are so highly prized by bibliophiles, it is owing to their want of general artistic ensemble, and not to any deficiency in mechanical execution. The artistic taste of English printers has, however, been greatly raised during the last few years, and a very interesting movement is going on which must produce important results in the future. In 1880 Mr Andrew W. Tuer of London organized the Printers’ Specimen Exchange, a scheme intended to promote the technical education of the working printer. Each contributor to the exchange furnishes periodically a certain fixed number of typographical specimens, all alike, which are collated into sets, and again distributed to the members, each of whom gets a volume, consisting of one copy of the work of each of his fellow-contributors. By this plan they become acquainted with the progress made by their brethren, and good taste and good work are fostered and mutually encouraged. The eighth quarto volume, issued in 1887, contains nearly 400 fine specimens of typography by as many different hands. It forms also the best criterion of the character of the jobbing work done at the present day, not only in England but abroad, for the scheme is of an international character. The results of the revival in artistic printing during the last decade are especially noticeable in jobbing work. Much of this improvement is due to the superior material with which the printer is furnished, and especially to the great variety of ornamental types which have been introduced. The specimen books of the principal type-founders are splendid volumes, containing several thousand different faces. The best work of German printers is noteworthy for its studied neatness and attractiveness, tasteful and harmonious arrangement of colour and tint, a characteristic and conscientious attention to details of finish, exact register, and beauty of impression. American work excels in originality of design, brilliancy of colour, and perfect finish. English printers are closely following the best points of each of these schools of typography. There is a distinct leaning at present to the German style, but with little slavish imitation. The distinctness of English typography is maintained, while the beautiful German combination borders, produced with such profusion of late, are judiciously utilized, often in conjunction with American type. In the arrangement of colours English printers prefer the quiet harmonious tints of the Germans to the bold striking contrasts of the Americans.
The vast extent of the operations of the printing fraternity at the present day is in remarkable contrast to those of the 15th century, when the making of books was an art like the sculpture of statues or the designing of buildings. Now, printing is a manufacture in which large capital and the greatest division of labour are essential. The old printers were almost entirely independent of other craftsmen. From the casting of the type to the mixing of the ink they did nearly everything for themselves. Gradually the different departments of the art were constituted separate and recognized trades. The type-founder was probably the first to secede from the concern; then printers delegated to others the making of presses; afterwards the ink and the rollers found separate and distinct manufacturers; and there arose a class of persons who, though belonging to other trades, made printing appliances a specialty, such as printers’ smiths, printers’ joiners, and printers’ engineers. Subdivision again has taken place in regard to the operations which chiefly appertain to printing. The same man was formerly able to set up and print off the types, to fold the sheets perhaps, and even to make them up into books. The operative printer has now become either a pressman or a compositor. If he is of the first denomination, he may be classed according as he works at press or machine. If he is a machinist, he may superintend or be a “minder,” or he may be a layer-on or a taker-off of the sheets. If he is a minder, he may understand only book machines or only news machines; he may know all about platens and little about cylinders; or of cylinders he may know only one kind. Entirely novel machines create a new class of artisans. There are men perfectly competent to manage a Walter press who are ignorant how to work two-colour or fine book-work machines. In the compositor’s department division of labour is carried out to a still minuter degree. An old-fashioned printer would set up indifferently a placard, a title-page, or a book. At the present day we have jobbing hands, book hands, and news hands, the word “hand” suggesting the factory-like nature of the business. There are jobbing hands who confine themselves to posters, and know little about general work even in this department. Book hands comprise those who set up the titles and those who set up the body of the work. Of these latter again, while one man composes, another, the “maker-up,” arranges the pages. Even the art of fitting up the furniture or “dressing the chase” is given to the “quoin - drawer overseer.” News hands include advertisement hands and general hands. Some men work by day, others altogether by night; some do general book-work composition; others set up head-lines; others make up the galleys; others “prove” them.
Old Style Printing.
Within the last few years there has been an interesting revival of the old style of book printing. It owes its origin to Mr Whittingham of the Chiswick Press, who in 1843 was desirous of printing in appropriate type a work of fiction the diction of which was supposed to be that of the reign of Charles II. As the original “old face” matrices of the first Caslon had been preserved, a fount was cast from them, and on getting a proof with good ink, on good paper, from a modern press the impression was found to be far superior to specimens printed from the original fount. Since then the demand for old-faced characters has steadily increased, and all founders now supply imitations of the old types. Comparing the old face and the modern characters, the latter are more regular in size, lining, setting, and colour,—using these words in the technical sense of the founder; they have finer strokes and serifs, and produce in the page a more regular and sparkling general effect. At the same time it may be conceded that legibility has been to a certain extent sacrificed to beauty and general effect. About 1882 an eminent French printer made a number of experiments to ascertain what it is that constitutes legibility in type, and found that people read with less fatigue according as the letters—(a ) are rounder, (b ) are more equal in thickness, (c) have shorter upstrokes, (d ) are dissimilar to each other, and (e ) are well proportioned to their own body. Drawings of letters from old books were visible and legible at a distance at which modern letters could not be distinguished. The revival has also brought about the re-introduction of antique head-pieces and tail-pieces, vignettes, and initial letters, which have been reproduced from old books by photography and typo-etching. For this kind of printing white paper has given place to toned, of a straw tint, which is often more agreeable to the eyes than the excessively bleached paper which was hitherto the fashion. Also hand-made instead of machine-made paper has to a large extent come into vogue. Its characteristic is the “deckle edge ”, which distinguishes it from the clean-cut edge of machine papers, and is highly prized by some bibliophiles. When extreme verisimilitude is required, this kind of printing is done on the blank leaves of real old books, some of which have been ruthlessly destroyed for this modern craze. On the whole, however, the revival of old style printing has been beneficial: it has encouraged printers to study the more artistic attributes of the productions of the great printers of the past, and has educated the public taste by presenting them with examples of the best kind of book-making.
Printing Establishment.
A large book-printing establishment contains many distinct departments, some of which have not been previously referred to and may here be summarily mentioned. The reading department, sometimes called the closet, consists of a number of small apartments, each furnished with a desk, a couple of stools, and a shelf for books of reference, and having for its occupants the reader and his reading-boy. There is also the warehouse, where all the printed and unprinted sheets (or “white paper” as it is called, whatever its colour) are stored. Adjacent to this are folding, cutting, hot and cold pressing, drying, and other branches, each employing separate classes of artisans. Another department is the machine-room, where, arranged in long rows with an avenue between, are the various printing machines. The men in this part of the establishment wear cotton vestments, covering all their other apparel, and caps, invariably made of paper, something like clerical birettas. The machine overseer has his box and keeps an account of the produce of each machine. Under him are the persons whose business it is to cut out overlays for the cut or illustrated formes. These men are in their way artists, for to them is attributable much of the beauty and perfection of working of each block that goes through their hands. They have by them three or four prints or “pulls” of the block, and their tools consist of scissors, paste, a sharp knife or two, and perhaps a razor-like blade set in a wooden handle. Their work is to deepen the shadows, raise the lights, lower the edges, and perform a hundred other offices for a block. Standing sentry over each machine is the machine minder; under him are the takers-off and layers-on. The engine-room and boiler-house are close by, and higher up may be the hand-press-room,—provided these appliances are used. Here are the pressmen and their apprentices. There is the storekeeper’s department, fitted up with shelves, racks, and drawers, for the orderly storage of type and materials. The plate-safe or plate-room is the repository of the stereo and electro plates, each plate being kept wrapped up in paper, with a distinctive index number marked thereon. There are also rooms for casting rollers, stereotyping rooms, drying rooms for paper, hydraulic pressing rooms, sinks for washing formes, and lifts for conveying them from one department to another. There will possibly be several composing-rooms, such as the ’stab, where all the men are paid on established weekly wages, the piece room, where they are paid by results, and the apprentices’ room. There may be rooms where particular jobs are done, especially if weekly periodicals are turned out, and the names of these designate the rooms. At the end of each room is the overseer. It is also a common practice for a number of men to form themselves into a kind of business partnership called a companionship or 'ship. All the transactions of the compositor may be with his own clicker,— the workman who is selected to keep the accounts of the partnership. From him the compositor receives his portion of copy and the necessary directions, and to him he gives the matter when it is composed. At the end of the week he “writes his bill,” delivers it to the clicker, and from the latter receives at pay time the wages he has earned. The clicker gets the matter proved or “pulled” by the proofpuller, who usually does nothing else but pull proofs. He will then send the proof with the copy to the overseer, and the overseer sends it to the reading department to be corrected. The proof, when corrected, is returned through the overseer (who retains the copy) to the clicker, and he gives it to the compositor who set it up. When the type is corrected a revise is pulled, which goes through the same hands to the overseer again; and then it is despatched to the author, editor, or publisher. In a well-ordered composing-room strict silence is enjoined upon the workmen. Among the industrial pursuits there is none more monotonous and more exacting, none demanding more patience, sustained industry, and power of endurance than the compositor’s art. In a large newspaper office the quantity of types picked up in a few hours is marvellous. No better illustration of this could be given than the fact that several recent issues of the Times have consisted of three sheets or twenty-four pages, each page comprising six columns. In one of these issues 84⅔ of the 144 columns were filled with advertisements, 2559 in number, set in extremely small type; the remaining 59⅓ columns contained articles, reviews, letters, reports, and paragraphs. The total length of the column aggregate was 264 feet (62 more than the height of the London Monument). If the matter comprised in the paper, instead of being broken up into columns, had been set in one continuous line it would have reached one mile 950 yards. The number of separate types used in printing this issue was calculated at over two millions, and the quantity of printed matter was reckoned to be equivalent to that contained in two octavo volumes of 480 pages each. The literary and mechanical staff of a first-rate London daily newspaper, excluding casual reporters and unattached writers on various subjects, aggregates about 300 persons.
Bibliography.— On the practice of the art and its auxiliary processes, see Southward, Dictionary of Typography (3d ed., London, 1875, 8vo; with the Literary Almanack by william Blades), and Practical Printing: a Handbook of the Art of Typography (3d ed., London, 1887, 2 vols., 8vo). This last is the fullest work on the subject in the English language, embracing composition, press work, stereotyping, and electrotyping, and the warehouse department of a printing office. Gould’s Letterpress Printer (2d ed., Middlesborough, 1880, 12mo) has a short introduction by Southward, giving a sketch of the origin and progress of the different typographical processes and appliances from the beginning. See also F. J. F. Wilson, Typographic Printing Machines and Machine Printing (3d ed., London, 1883, 8vo); List of Technical Terms relating to Printing Machinery (London, 1882,8vo); Noble, Machine Printing (London, 1883, 8vo) and Principles and Practice of Colour Printing (London, 1881, 8vo); and Wilson, Stereotyping and Electrotyping (London, 1880, 8vo). This last contains a history of stereotyping and electrotyping by Southward. The best works in French are-Lefèvre, Guide Pratique du Compositeur et de l' Imprimeur (Paris, 1855-72, 8vo, two parts; includes machine work, stereotyping, and electrotyping); Claye, Manuel de l'Apprenti Compositeur (3d ed., 12mo, Paris, 1883); and Monet, Les Machines et Appareils Typographiques, suivi des Procédés d'Impression (Paris, 1879, 8vo). The best German work, and one which from its completeness supersedes all others, is Waldow’s Illustrierte Encyklopädie der graphischen Künste (Leipsic, 1884, lar. 8vo), containing 2798 articles and 581 illustrations, with a list of German books on typography, &c.
Periodicals.— No trade or interest in the world has, perhaps, so many representatives in the press as printing. The journals which record its progress and describe its products are unrivalled in their excellent mechanical attributes, some equalling the highest class of book-work printing and using paper of the most luxurious description. Their literary character is usually worthy of their mechanical excellence, and they comprise an immense collection of facts and speculations on the subjects involved. They also attract a class of writers who in time become specialists and do the most valuable work in historical investigation. The Printers’ Register (monthly), begun in 1863, the oldest of the English printing trade journals, contains several valuable contributions by Mr William Blades, the biographer of Caxton, such as “Numismata Typographica,” “Bibliotheca Typographica,” “Books and their Enemies," “The Inventor of the Steam Printing Press,” and “Early Type Specimen Books.” The Paper and Printing Trades Journal (quarterly), begun in 1872, is printed in old style fashion, and reproduces in tone as well as in manner some of the best examples of the French and Italian schools in head and tail pieces, vignettes, an<l ornamental initials. In France appear L'Imprimerie (semi-monthly)and the Bulletin de l'Imprimerie ; in Germany, Archiv für Buchdruckerkunst (monthly) and Journal für Buchdruckerkunst; in Italy L'Arte della Stampa. The United States has the Inland Printer (Chicago) and the American Bookmaker (New York). The fullest list of such journals, past and present, is Louis Mohr’s Die periodische Fachpresse der Typographie (Strasburg, 1879). There is also an extended list, with historical annotations, in Bigmore and Wyman’s Bibliography of Printing.
