Chapter II: Part 2

The characters on the Egyptian and Babylonian bricks are much more neatly executed than would seem necessary for inscriptions on so common a material as clay. But they are really coarse, when compared with the inscriptions upon the small cylinders of clay which were used by the Assyrians for the preservation of their public documents. Layard mentions a small six-sided Assyrian cylinder that contains sixty lines of minute characters which could be read only by the aid of a magnifying glass. Antiquaries are not yet perfectly agreed as to the method by which the cylinders were made. Layard, who says that the Babylonian bricks were stamped, thinks that the inscriptions on the cylinders were cut on the clay. But there are many cylinders which show the clearest indications of impression.

It is probable that they were made by both methods. The clay was prepared for writing as well as for stamping. Ezekiel, who prophesied by the river Chebar in Assyria, was commanded to take a tile, and portray upon it the city of Jerusalem. The Chaldean priests informed Callisthenes that they kept their astronomical observations on tiles that were subsequently baked in the furnace. Four large piles of tablets of unburned clay were found by Layard in the library or hall of records of Assurbanipal. Some of the tablets are the grammars and primers of the language; some are records of agreements to sell property or slaves; some are filled with astronomical or astrological predictions. On one of them was inscribed the Assyrian version of the deluge. The cylinders contained the memorials which were then considered as of most value, such as the proclamations of the king, or the laws of the empire. In the museum of the East India Company is the fragment of a clay cylinder which contains a portion of the decrees or annals of Nebuchadnezzar. For perpetuating records of this nature, the cylinders were admirably adapted. [p034] They were convenient for reference, and their legibility, after so long an exposure, shows that they were perfectly durable.

We do not know by what considerations Assyrian rulers were governed when about to choose between engraving or writing on clay; but it is not unreasonable to assume that the inscription was written or cut on the clay, when one copy only of a record was wanted; if numerous copies were wanted, a die or an engraving on wood was manufactured, from which these copies were moulded. No surer method of securing exact copies of an original could have been devised among a people that did not use ink and paper. These cylinders are examples of printing in its most elementary form.

[From Hansard.]]

The accompanying illustration, copied from Hansard’s _Typographia_, represents an Assyrian cylinder which presents the same indications of impression which have been noticed upon the bricks. This cylinder, which is seven inches wide at each end, was so thoroughly baked in a furnace that it is partially vitrified. Around its largest circumference is a ragged and bulging line, about a quarter of an inch wide, which seems [p035] to have been made by the imperfect meeting of two moulding stamps. If the inscription had been cut on the clay, this defect would not appear; the vertical lines would have been connected, and the ragged white line would have been made smooth.

This method of printing in clay was rude and imperfect, but, to some extent, it did the work of modern typography. Writings were published at small expense, and records were preserved for ages without the aid of ink or paper. The modern printer may wonder that this skill in printing was not developed. The engraving that was used to impress clay could have been coated with ink and stamped on parchment. Simple as this application of the engraving may appear, it was never made. So far from receiving any improvement, the art of printing in clay gradually fell into disuse. It has been neglected for more than twenty-five centuries on the soil where it probably originated. For Layard tells us that an Assyrian six-sided cylinder was used as a candlestick by a reputable Turcoman family living in the village where it was found. A hole in the centre of one of the ends received the tallow candle. There is a practical irony in this base application of what may have been a praise of “the great king,” which has never been surpassed by Solomon or Shakspeare in their reflections on the vanity of human greatness.

Engraving was used by the ancient Greeks in a manner which should have suggested the feasibility of printing with ink. Some of the maps of the Athenians were engraved on smooth metal plates, with lines cut below the surface, after the method of copper-plate printers, from which impressions on vellum, or even on papyrus, could have been taken. But, so far as we know, the impressions were not taken: for every new map there was a new engraving.

The Assyrian method of engraving stamps for impressing clay was practised by the old Roman potters, who marked their manufactures with the names of the owners or with the contents of the vessel. The potters clearly understood the [p036] value of movable types. On some of their lamps of clay, the inscriptions were made by impressing, consecutively, the type of each letter. These types must have been movable, and, in appearance, somewhat like the punches or the model letters of type-founders.

There were some men in ancient Rome who had a clear perception of the ease with which engraved letters could be combined. Cicero, in an argument against the hypothesis of logical results from illogical causes, has intimated that it would be absurd to look for an intelligible sentence from a careless mixing up of the engraved letters of the alphabet.[5] The phrase by which he describes the assembled letters, _formæ literarum_, was used by the early printers to describe types. His argument implies, conversely, that if proper care were exercised, it would be easy to arrange the letters in readable sentences. But the speculation of Cicero did not go beyond the idea of combination. It does not appear that he thought that the letters could be used for printing.

Quintilian had speculations about engraved letters. He recommended to teachers the use of a thin stencil plate of wood, on which should be cut the letters that a boy might be required to copy when learning to write. The boy who traced the characters with his writing implement would have his hand guided and formed by the outlines of the perforated letters. The curt manner in which stencil plates are noticed should lead us to think that they were then in common use. We can see that stencils of this nature could have been used, at least as an aid, in the mechanical manufacture of books; but it is not probable that they were so used. [p037]

We have some evidences that the old Romans practised, at least experimentally, the art of printing with ink. The British Museum has a stamp with letters engraved in relief, that was found near Rome, and which seems to have been made for the purpose of printing the signature of its owner. The stamp is a brass plate, about two inches long and not quite one inch wide. A brass ring is attached to the back of the plate which may have been used as a socket for the finger, or as a support when it was suspended from a chain or girdle. On the face of the stamp are engraved two lines of capital letters, huddled together in the usual style of all old Roman inscriptions, cut the reverse way, as it would now be done for printing, and enclosed by a border line. An impression taken from this stamp would produce the letters in the accompanying illustration, which may be translated, _the signature of Cecilius Hermias_. Of Cecilius Hermias we know nothing. He may have been a civic official who used this stamp to exempt himself from the trouble of writing, or a citizen who tried to hide his inability to write.

If this stamp should be impressed in wax, the impression would produce letters sunk below the surface of the wax in a manner that is unlike the impressions of seals. The raised surface on the wax would be rough where it should be flat and smooth. This peculiarity is significant. As this rough field unfitted it for a neat impression on any plastic surface, the stamp should have been used for printing with ink.

[From Jackson.]]

The accompanying illustration is that of a brass printing stamp in the British Museum, which is preserved as a specimen of old Roman workmanship.[6] The letters were cut in relief, in reverse order, and with a rough counter or field. This roughness proves that it could not have been used to impress wax. [p038]

Brass stamps of similar construction and of undetermined age have been frequently found in France and Italy. All of them are of small size, and contain names of persons only.

[From Jackson.]]

The illustrations annexed, of two engraved brass stamps of eccentric shapes, were also copied from the originals in the British Museum. As the letters are roughly sunk in the metal, and are not fitted for stamping in wax, it is supposed that the stamps were made for impression with ink. They are regarded as Roman antiquities, of undoubted authenticity, but the meaning of the inscriptions, the special purposes for which they were made, and the period in which they were employed, are unknown. The difficulty connected with the proper fixing of ink upon these stamps of brass, of which a subsequent notice will be made, is one of many causes which prevented the development of this experimental form of printing.

A favorite method of making impressions was that of branding. Virgil, in the third book of the Georgics, tells us of its application to cattle. The old laws of many European states tell us of its application to human beings. The cruel practice was kept up long after the invention of typography. During the reign of Edward VI, of England (1547–1553), it was enacted that, “whosoever, man or woman, not being lame or impotent, nor so aged or diseased that he or she could not work, should be convicted of loitering or idle wandering by the highwayside, or in the streets, like a servant wanting a master, or a beggar, he or she was to be marked with a hot [p039] iron upon the breast with the letter V [for vagabond], and adjudged to the person bringing him or her before a justice, to be his slave for two years; and if such adjudged slave should run away, he or she, upon being taken and convicted, was to be marked upon the forehead, or upon the ball of the cheek, with the letter S [for slave], and adjudged to be the said master’s slave forever.”

With these evidences before us of long continued practice in various methods of engraving and stamping, and of a fair knowledge of some of the advantages of movable letters, the question may be asked, Why did the world have to wait so long for the invention of typography? This question is based on the assumption, that the civilization of antiquity was capable of making and preserving the invention which was missed through accident or neglect. Here is a grave error. The elements of an invention are like those of a chemical mixture. All the constituents but one may be there, exact in quantity and quality, but, for the lack of that one, the mixing of the whole in a new form cannot be accomplished. Failure in one point is entire failure.

The ancients failed in many points. They were destitute of several materials which we regard as indispensable in the practice of printing. They had no ink suitable for the work. Pliny and Dioscorides have given the formulas for the writing ink that was used by Greek and Roman scribes during the first century. Pliny says that the ink of book-writers was made of soot, charcoal and gum. He does not say what fluid was used to mix these materials, but he does allude to an occasional use of acid, to give the ink encaustic property and to make it bite in the papyrus. Dioscorides is more specific as to the quantities. He says that one ounce of gum should be mixed with three ounces of soot. Another formula is, one-half pound of smoke-black made from burned resin, one-half ounce each of copperas and ox-glue. Dioscorides further says that the latter mixture “is a good application in cases of gangrene, and is useful in scalds, if a little thickened, and [p040] employed as a salve.” From this crude recipe one may form a correct opinion of the quality of the scientific knowledge then applied to medicine and the mechanical arts.

These mixtures, which are more like liquid shoe blacking than writing fluid, were used, with immaterial modifications, by the scribes of the dark ages. Useful as they may have been for their methods of writing, they could not have been applied to the inking of a metal surface engraved in relief. If the brass stamps described on a previous page had been brushed over never so carefully with these watery inks, the metal surface would not be covered with a smooth film of color. The ink would collect in spots and blotches. When stamped on paper or vellum, the ink thereupon impressed would be of irregular blackness, illegible in spots, and easily effaced. Writing ink, thickened with gum, has but a feeble encaustic property. It will not be absorbed, unless it is laid on in little pools, and unless the writing surface is scratched by a pen to aid the desired absorption. The flat impression of a smooth metal stamp could not make a fluid or a gummy ink penetrate below the writing surface. It was, no doubt, by reason of the inferior appearance of impressions of this nature that the brass stamps described on a previous page found so limited a use.

An unsuitable ink may seem but a trifling impediment to the development of printing, but if there had been no other, this would have been an insurmountable obstacle. The modern printer, who sees that the chief ingredients of printing ink are the well-known materials smoke-black and oil, may think that an ignorance of this mixture, or an inability to discover it, is ridiculous and inexcusable. Modern printing ink is but one of many inventions which could be named as illustrating the real simplicity of a long delayed improvement. Simple as it may seem, the mixing of color with oil was a great invention which wrought a revolution in the art of painting.

This invention, attributed by some authors to unknown Italian painters of the fourteenth century, and by others to [p041] Hubert Van Eyck of Holland, at or about the beginning of the fifteenth century, immediately preceded the invention of types. The early typographic printers, who could not use the ink of the copyists, succeeded only when they mixed their black with oil. After four centuries of experience in the use of printing ink made with oil, and after repeated experimentation with impracticable substitutes, it may be confidently asserted that an invention of typography would have failed, if this use of oil had not been understood. The invention of types had to wait for the invention of ink.

Typography had to wait for the invention of paper, the only material that is mechanically adapted for printing, the only material that supplies the wants of the reader in his requirements for strength, cheapness, compactness and durability. Paper was known in civilized Europe for at least two centuries before typography was invented, but it was not produced in sufficient quantity nor of a proper quality until the beginning of the fifteenth century.

The old Romans had no substitute for paper that could have been devoted to printing or book-making. The papyrus which they used was so brittle that it could not be folded, creased and sewed like modern rag paper. It could not be bound up in books; it could not be rolled up, unsupported, like a sheet of parchment. It was secure only when it had been carefully wound around a wooden roller. The scribes of Rome and the book copyists of the middle ages preferred vellum. It was preferred by illuminators after printing had been invented. But vellum was never a favorite material among printers. In its dry state, it is harsh, and wears types; it is greasy, and resists ink; in its moistened state, it is flabby, treacherous and unmanageable. The early books on vellum are not so neatly printed as those on paper. But these faults were trivial as compared with the graver fault of inordinate price. When we consider that the skins of more than three hundred sheep were used in every copy of the first printed Bible, it is clear that typography would have been a failure [p042] if it had depended on a liberal supply of vellum. Even if the restricted size of vellum could have been conformed to, there were not enough sheep at the end of the fifteenth century to supply the demands of printing presses for a week.

If the idea of printing books from movable types had been entertained by an ancient Roman bookseller, or by a copyist, during the earlier part of the dark ages, it may be doubted whether he could have devised the mechanism that is needed in the making of types. For types that are accurate as to body, and economical as to cost, can be made by one method only. It is, in the highest degree, improbable, that the scientific method of making types by mechanism could have been invented at an earlier date than the fifteenth century. There was mechanical skill enough for the production of any kind of ingenious hand work, but the spirit that prompted men to construct machines and labor-saving apparatus was deficient or but feebly exercised. There was no more of true science in mechanics than there was in chemistry. The construction of a suitable type-mould, with its appurtenances, during the dark ages, would have been as premature as an invention of the steam engine in the same period.

The civilization of ancient Rome did not require printing. If all the processes of typography had been revealed to its scholars the art would not have been used. The wants of readers and writers were abundantly supplied by the pen. Papyrus paper was cheap, and scribes were numerous; Rome had more booksellers than it needed, and books were made faster than they could be sold. The professional scribes were educated slaves, who, fed and clothed at nominal expense, and organized under the direction of wealthy publishers, were made so efficient in the production of books, that typography, in an open competition, could have offered few advantages.

Our knowledge of the Roman organization of labor in the field of book-making is not as precise as could be wished; but the frequent notices of books, copyists and publishers, made by many authors during the first century, teach us that [p043] books were plentiful. Horace, the elegant and fastidious man of letters, complained that his books were too common, and that they were sometimes found in the hands of vulgar snobs for whose entertainment they were not written. Martial, the jovial man of the world, boasted that his books of stinging epigrams were to be found in everybody’s hands or pockets. Books were read not only in the libraries, but at the baths, in the porticoes of houses, at private dinners and in mixed assemblies. The business of book-making was practised by too many people, and some were incompetent. Lucian, who had a keen perception of pretense in every form, ridicules the publishers as ignoramuses. Strabo, who probably wrote illegibly, says that the books of booksellers were incorrect.

Tablet with Waxed Surface. Manuscript Roll, with Title on Scrinium or Case for Manuscripts. the Ticket. Papyrus Manuscript partially Unrolled.

Roman Scrinium, with Rolls of Papyrus.]

The prices of books made by slave labor were necessarily low. Martial says that his first book of epigrams was sold in plain binding for six sesterces, about twenty-four cents of American money; the same book in sumptuous binding was valued at five denarii, about eighty cents. He subsequently complained that his thirteenth book was sold for only four sesterces, about sixteen cents. He frankly admits that half of this sum was profit, but intimates, somewhat ungraciously, that the publisher Tryphon gave him too small a share. Of the merits of this old disagreement between the author and publisher, we have not enough of facts to justify an opinion. We learn that some publishers, like Tryphon and the brothers [p044] Sosii, acquired wealth, but there are many indications that publishing was then, as it is now, one of the most speculative kinds of business. One writer chuckles over the unkind fate that sent so many of the unsold books of rival authors from the warehouses of the publisher, to the shops of grocers and bakers, where they were used to wrap up pastry and spices; another writer says that the unsold stock of a bookseller was sometimes bought by butchers and trunk-makers.

The Romans not only had plenty of books but they had a manuscript daily newspaper, the _Acta Diurna_, which seems to have been a record of the proceedings of the senate. We do not know how it was written, nor how it was published, but it was frequently mentioned by contemporary writers as the regular official medium for transmitting intelligence. It was sent to subscribers in distant cities, and was, sometimes, read to an assembled army. Cicero mentions the _Acta_ as a sheet in which he expected to find the city news and gossip about marriages and divorces.

In the sixth century the business of book-making had fallen into hopeless decay. Ignorance pervaded all ranks of society.[7] The books that had been written were neglected, and the number of readers and scholars diminished with every succeeding generation.[8] The treasures of literature at Rome, Constantinople and Alexandria which were destroyed by fire or by barbaric invasion were not replaced. Books were so scarce at the close of the seventh century, that Pope Martin requested one of his bishops to supply them, if possible, from Germany. The ignorance of ecclesiastics in high station was [p045] alarming. During this century, and for centuries afterward, there were many bishops and archbishops of the church who could not sign their names. It was asserted at a council of the church held in the year 992, that scarcely a single person was to be found in Rome itself who knew the first element of letters. Hallam says, “To sum up the account of ignorance in a word, it was rare for a layman of any rank to know how to sign his name.” Charlemagne could not write, and Frederic Barbarossa could not read; John, king of Bohemia, and Philip the Hardy, king of France, were ignorant of both accomplishments.[9] The graces of literature were tolerated only in the ranks of the clergy; the layman who preferred letters to arms was regarded as a man of mean spirit. When the crusaders took Constantinople, in 1204, they exposed to public ridicule the pens and inkstands that they found in the conquered city as the ignoble arms of a contemptible race of students.

During this period of intellectual darkness, which lasted from the fifth until the fifteenth century, a period sometimes described, and not improperly, as the dark ages, there was no need for any improvement in the old method of making books. The world was not then ready for typography. The invention waited for readers more than it did for types; the multitude of book-buyers upon which its success depended had to be created. Books were needed as well as readers. The treatises of the old Roman sophists and rhetoricians, the dialectics of Aristotle and the schoolmen, and the commentaries on ecclesiastical law of the fathers of the church, were the works which engrossed the attention of men of letters for many centuries before the invention of typography. Useful as these books may have been to the small class of readers for whose benefit they were written, they were of no benefit to a people who required the elements of knowledge.

We may imagine the probable fate of a premature and unappreciated invention of typography by thinking of results that might have been and have not been accomplished by printing among a people who were not prepared to use it as [p046] it should be used. Printing has been practised in China for many centuries, but there can be no comparison between the fruits of printing in China and in Europe. The remarkable inefficiency of the Chinese method is the result not so much of clumsiness of the process, as of the perverseness of a people who are unable to improve it, and unwilling to accept the improvements of Europeans. The first printing press brought to the New World was set up in the City of Mexico about one hundred years before a printing office was established in Massachusetts. Books were printed in Constantinople, perhaps as early as 1490, certainly before types were thought of in Scotland. And now Scotland sends types and books to Turkey, and Boston sends printing paper and presses to Mexico. If the people of Turkey and Mexico are receiving benefits from printing, the benefits have been derived from the practice of the art abroad and not at home.

In making an estimate of the service that printing has done for the world, we frequently overlook the supports by which it has been upheld. It is a common belief that the diffusion of knowledge which was so clearly manifested in the fifteenth century was due to the invention of printing. This belief reverses the proper order, and substitutes the effect for the cause. It was the broader diffusion of knowledge that made smooth the way for the development of typography. In its infancy, the invention was indebted for its existence to improvements in liberal and mechanical arts; in its maturity, it is largely indebted for its success to discoveries in science, and to reforms in government.

The magnetic telegraph is the most recent discovery, and of the most importance, in its services to the daily newspaper press. The circulation of leading American daily newspapers has more than trebled since the invention of the telegraph.

The free public schools of America have done much to promote the growth of printing. If the State did not offer free books and free education, a large portion of the people would grow up in ignorance. Every scholar in a public school [p047] becomes for life a reader, and to some extent, a purchaser of books. The value of the school-books manufactured in the United States annually, has been estimated at fifteen million dollars. Of Webster’s Spelling-Book alone, thirty-five million copies have been sold, and a million copies are printed every year. If printing were deprived of the support it receives from public schools, there would at once follow a noticeable decrease in the production of printed matter, and a corresponding decrease in the number of readers and book-buyers.

To foster the tastes which have been cultivated by public schools and newspapers, some States have established public libraries in every school district. There are, also, a great many valuable libraries which have been established by voluntary association or by individual bequest. These libraries create books as well as readers.

Railroads, steamboats and package expresses are aids of as great importance. The New-York daily newspaper, printed early in the morning, is sold within a radius of three hundred miles before sunset of the same day. Newspapers now find hundreds of eager purchasers in places where they would not have found one in the days of stage-coaches. The benefits of cheap and quick transportation are also favorable to the sale of books. A bookseller’s package, weighing one hundred pounds, will be carried from New York to St. Louis, on the Mississippi, within sixty-five hours, at an average expense of three dollars. When there was no railroad from St. Louis to San Francisco, the overland charges on one hundred pounds of books were one hundred dollars. The long delays and great expenses of stage-coach transportation would operate almost as a prohibition to the sale of periodicals and new books.

The greatest legislative aid that printing has received is through the facilities which are furnished by post-offices and mails. They create readers. Weekly newspapers are now sent, for one year, for twenty cents, to subscribers in the most remote corner of the Union. Books are sent three thousand miles at the rate of one cent per ounce. The improvement [p048] of postal facilities has increased the number of readers and purchasers of newspapers to an amount unforeseen by the most sanguine projector.

All these aids are, comparatively, of recent introduction. The beginnings of the telegraph, the railroad and the express are within the memory of the men of the present generation. The systematic establishment of free schools and libraries is the work of the present century. Public mails and post-offices were introduced in 1530, but it is only within the past forty years that their management has been more liberal for the benefit of the people. It is by aids like these, and not by its intrinsic merits alone, that printing has received its recent development. It was for the want of these aids that printing languished for many years after its invention. One has but to consider the many supports printing has received to see that its premature invention would have been fruitless.

If, even now, when books and readers and literary tastes are as common as they were infrequent, it is necessary to the success of printing that there shall be schools and libraries, cheap and rapid methods of travel, generous postal facilities, a liberal government and a broad toleration of the greatest differences in opinion, what but failure could have been expected when the world was destitute of nearly all? Printing not only had to wait many centuries for improvements in mechanical appliances, without which it would have been worthless; it had to wait for a greater number of readers, for liberal governments, for instructive writers, for suitable books. It came at the proper time, not too soon, not too late. “Not the man, the age invents.”

[p049]

III

The Key to the Invention of Typography.

Conflicting Theories about the Invention of Typography . . . Was it an Invention or a Combination? . . . Errors of Superficial Observers . . . Merit of the Invention is not in Impression . . . Not altogether in Types or Composition . . . Types of no value unless they are Accurate . . . Hand-made Types Impracticable . . . Merit of Invention is in the Method of Making Types . . . Is but One Method . . . Description . . . Counter-Punch . . . Punch . . . Matrix . . . Mould . . . Illustrations . . . Type-Making as Illustrated by Moxon in 1683 . . . As Illustrated by Amman in 1564 . . . Notices of Type-Making by Earlier Authors . . . Type-Mould the Symbol of Typography . . . Inventor of the Type-Mould the Inventor of Typography . . . A Great Invention, but Original only in the Type-Mould.

* * * * *

The character of typography is not pressing and printing but mobilization. The winged A is its symbol. The elements unchained, the letters freed from every bond in which the pen or chisel of calligrapher or xylographer held them entangled; the cut character risen from the tomb of the solitary tablet into the substantive life of the cast types—that is the invention of printing.

_Van der Linde._

* * * * *

There is a wide-spread belief that typography was, in all its details, a purely original invention. A popular version of its origin, hereafter to be related, says that it was the result of an accidental discovery; a conflicting version says that it was the result of more than thirteen years of secret experiment. Each version teaches us that there was no perceptible unfolding of the invention; that the alleged inventor created all that he needed, that he made his types, ink and presses, that he derived nothing of value from the labors of earlier printers. If typography was invented by Gutenberg, it was fitly introduced by the sudden appearance of the printed Bible in two folio volumes; if invented by Coster, by the unheralded publication of a thin folio of large [p050] wood-cuts with descriptive text of type. If either of these versions is accepted in the form in which it is usually told, we must also believe that printing, in the form of perfected typography, leaped, Minerva-like, fully equipped, from the brain of the inventor.

There is another belief, which is strongly maintained by a few scholars, that typography was not an original invention, that it was nothing more than a new application of the old theories and methods of impression which have already been described. According to this view, the practice of engraving is at least as old as the oldest Egyptian seal; the publication of written language can be traced to the Babylonish bricks; printing with ink, as indicated by old Roman hand stamps, was practised as early as the fifth century; the combinations of movable letters were suggested by Cicero and St. Jerome. All that was needed for the full development of typography was the invention of paper. Supplied with paper, the so-called inventor of typography did no more than combine the old theories and processes, and give them a new application. He really invented nothing.

In this conflict of opinion, the critical reader will note an inability to perceive the difference between impression and typography. Those who believe in the entire originality of typography ascribe its merit to the mind that first thought of the combinations of types; those who deny its originality find its vital element in pressure. With one class, the merit of the invention is in the idea of types; with the other, it is in the impression of types. Neither view is entirely correct.

A printer may see how these errors could be developed. The unreflecting observer, who, for the first time, surveys the operations of a printing office, finds in the fast presses the true vital principle of printing. With him, presswork is printing; type-setting and type-making are only adjuncts. He was the inventor of the modern art of printing who built the first press, and printed the first book. The conclusion is illogical, as will be shown on another page. If a radical [p051] improvement had not been made in the earliest method of printing books, the art would have been as unproductive in Europe as it has been in China. The fast press may do its work admirably, but its only functions are those of inking and impressing, and impression is not typography.

The thoughtful observer will perceive that the merit of modern printing is not in impression; that there would be neither fast presses, nor great books, nor daily newspapers, if there were no types. With him, whatever of greatness there is in printing is due to the mind that first imagined the utility of types. The grandness of the results that have been achieved by typography seem all the grander when he thinks that these results have been accomplished with such simple tools as little cubes of metal. The making of these tools he regards as a matter of minor importance. For in these types are visible no intricacy of mechanism as in the power loom, no indications of a mysterious agency as in the magnetic telegraph, no evidences of scientific skill as in photographic apparatus. There are in types, apparently, no more evidences of genius or science than there are in pins or needles. The grotesque types of the fifteenth century are rated by him, and even by many mechanics, as rude workmanship which could have been done by a carver in wood or a founder in metal. He who could imagine them could make them. To think was to do. The merit of the invention of typography is accordingly adjudged, not to the inventive spirit which constructed the mould by which the types were made, but to the genius which first thought of the utility of types. This is a grave error.

Speculations like these, which assign all the merit of the invention of typography to him who first conceived the idea of types, are opposed to many facts and probabilities. Cicero and Jerome could not have been the only men who thought of the combinations of engraved letters; nor were the old Roman lamp-makers and branders of cattle the only men who used types. The idea of stamping with detached letters [p052] could have been entertained, and practised, by hundreds of experimenters of whom there is no tradition. It is probable that there was such a practice, but the stamping of single types by hand pressure was not typography, nor did it lead to its subsequent invention. Experimental types like these, which had been cut by hand, were of no practical value, for they could not have been used on any extensive scale.

There is something more in types than is apparent at the first glance. Simple as they may seem, they are evidences of notable mechanical skill in the matter of accuracy. The page before the reader was composed with more than 2,000 pieces of metal; the large page of a daily paper may contain more than 150,000 of these little pieces. Whether the page is large or small, the types are always closely fitted to each other; they stand accurately in line, and the page is truly square. If the types of one character, as of the letter a, should be made the merest trifle larger or smaller than its fellows in the same font, all the types, when composed, will show the consequences of the defect. The irregularity of line that is scarcely perceptible in the first row will be offensively distinct in the second. It will increase with each succeeding row, until the types become a heap of confusion which cannot be handled by the printer. Advantages which might be secured from movable types are made of no effect by an irregularity so slight that it would be passed unnoticed in the workmanship of ordinary trades. The illustration proves that it is not enough for types to be movable; they must be accurate as to body; they must fit each other with geometrical precision.

The accuracy of modern printing types is due more to the nice mechanisms employed by the type-founder than to his personal skill. He could cut types by hand, but the cost of hand-cut types would be enormous, and they would be vastly [p053] inferior to types made by the type-casting machine. He could make types by a variety of mechanical methods, but they would be imperfect and unsatisfactory. A careful survey of the impracticable inventions in type-founding, recorded in the patent offices of this country and Great Britain, proves that there is, virtually, but one method of making types. The requirements of accuracy and cheapness can be met only by making them of metal, and casting them in a mould of metal.[10]

Although it is clearly understood, by all persons who have a practical knowledge of the subject, that practical types can be made only by casting, many popular books repeat the old story that the first typographic books were printed with types which had been cut by hand out of wood or metal. Whether the mechanics of the middle ages could have done what modern mechanics cannot do,—cut types with bodies of satisfactory accuracy—need not now be considered. The stories about hand-made types—about types that were sawed out of wood blocks—about types that were cut out of wooden rods, and skewered together with iron wires—about types that were engraved on the ends of cubes of metal—will be examined at greater length on an advanced page. Even if these doubtful stories were verified, it would still remain to be proved that the cut types had advantages over letters engraved on wood. It would be difficult to give reasons for their introduction. Books composed with cut types could not be neatly printed; they would be inferior to good manuscripts in appearance, but not inferior in price. Cut types [p054] were as impracticable in the infancy of the art as they are now. There is no trustworthy evidence that they were ever used for any other purpose than that of experiment.

Every method for making merchantable types, save that of casting, is a failure. Typography would be a great failure, if its types were not cast by scientific methods. This understood, we can see that the most meritorious feature in the invention does not belong to him who first thought of the advantages of types, nor even to him who first made them by impracticable methods. Its honors are really due to the man to whose sagacity and patience in experiment we are indebted for the type-mould, for he was the first to make types which could be used with advantage.

It will now be necessary to explain the scientific method of making types which is practised by every type-founder. The first process is the making of model letters. The work begins with the cutting on steel of a tool which is known as the Counter-punch. The illustration represents the face of a counter-punch for the letter H, of the size usually known among type-founders as Double-English. This counter-punch is an engraving, in high relief, of the hollow or the counter of that interior part of the letter H which does not show black in the printed impression. It has apparently, no resemblance to the letter for which it is made. When the proportions of the counter-punch have been duly approved, it is stamped or impressed to a proper depth on the end of a short bar of soft steel. Properly stamped, the counter-punch finishes by one quick stroke the interior part of the model letter, and does it more quickly and neatly than it could be done by cutting tools.

]

The short bar of soft steel is known as a Punch. When it has received the impress of the counter-punch, the punch cutter, for so the engraver of letters is called in type-foundries, cuts away the outer edges until the model letter is pronounced perfect. This is work of great exactness, for the millions of types that may be made by means of the punch [p055] will reproduce all its peculiarities, whether of merit or defect. The steel of the punch is then hardened until it has sufficient strength to penetrate prepared copper. It is then punched, by quick and strong pressure, on the flat side of a narrow bar of cold rolled copper. This operation makes a reversed or sunken imprint of the letter on the punch. In this condition, the punched copper bar is known among type-founders as a Drive, or a Strike, or an Unjustified Matrix. It becomes the Matrix proper, only after it has been carefully fitted-up to suit the mould. The exterior surface of the drive must be made truly flat, and this flatness must be parallel with the face of the stamped or sunken letter in the interior. The sides of the drive must be squared, so that the interior letter shall be at a fixed distance from the sides. The depth of the stamped letter, and its distance from the sides, must be made absolutely uniform in all the matrices required for a font or a complete assortment of letters. The object of this nicety is to secure a uniform height to all the types, and to facilitate the frequent changes of matrix on the mould. The justifying and fitting of matrices to moulds is one of the most exact operations in the art of type-founding.

For every character or letter really required in a full working assortment of types, the type-founder cuts a separate punch and fits up a separate matrix; but for all the characters or letters which are made to be used together, there is but one mould. Types are of no use, as has been shown, if they cannot be arranged and handled with facility, and printed in lines that are truly parallel. However unlike they may be in face, they must be exactly alike in body. This uniformity of body, which is as [p056] essential as variety of face, can be most certainly secured by casting all the types in one mould. All the matrices are, consequently, made with a view to being fitted to one mould. The mould forms the body, and the matrix forms the face of the type. With nearly every change of matrix there must be a new adjustment of the mould.

The word Body, as used by printers and type-founders, means the measurement of a type in one direction only—in a direction at a right angle with the regular lines or rows of printed matter. The types of the accompanying illustration are of the same height, but they are of different bodies.

Pica Small-pica Long-primer Bourgeois Brevier Minion Nonpareil body. body. body. body. body. body. body.

(See also page 18.)]

Exactness of body could be secured with little difficulty if all the types belonging to the same font were of the same width, and could be cast in one fixed and unalterable mould. But types of the same font and same body are of all widths. They vary, in the letters from the l to the W; in the spaces or blanks used to separate the words, from the hair space to the three-em quadrat. The spaces in the following illustrations are of the same body, but they are of different widths, to suit the peculiarities of different kinds of printed matter.

Six-in-em Five-in-em Four-in-em Three-in-em space. space. space. space.

En Em Two-em Three-em quadrat. quadrat. quadrat. quadrat.]

It is not practicable to make a mould for each character; the cost would be enormous, and the multiplicity of moulds [p057] would lead to fatal faults in inaccuracy of body. Exactness of body can be had only by casting all the characters in one mould, but this mould must be made to suit all the matrices. The matrices must be frequently changed, but with such nicety that the types of every letter shall be uniform in height, in line, and truly square. Any mechanic will see that the construction of an adjustable mould is work of difficulty, and that the fitting-up of a set of matrices for one mould is a very nice operation.

The Type-Mould of modern type-founders consists of two firmly screwed combinations of a number of pieces of steel, making right and left halves. In the first illustration of the mould, Figure 1, the halves are properly connected. In this form it is not practicable to represent the interior, but it may be understood that the interior faces fit each other snugly in every part but the centre, in which provision is made for a small opening which can be increased or diminished in a lateral direction only. One end of this opening is closed by the matrix; the other end is the jet, or the mouth-piece through which the melted metal is injected. In this opening, which is indicated by the letter H in the cut, the body of type is cast. The matrix which forms the face of the type is snugly fitted between the jaws on [p058] either side of this letter H. It does not appear in the cut; for the matrices, although indispensable parts, are always looked upon by founders as attachments to the mould.

Figures 2 and 3 represent the interior sides of the mould. For the purpose of clearer illustration, the half of the mould, Figure 2, is shown reversed, or upside down; but when this half is connected with its mate, the two halves appear as they do in Figure 1. These two halves differ from each other only in a few minor features. They are so constructed that, when joined, the sides which determine the body of the types are in exact parallel, and at a-fixed and unalterable distance from each other. In Figure 2, the ridges which make the nicks are noticeable; in Figure 3 the cast type is shown as it appears before it is thrown from the mould, with jet attached.[12]

Although the two sides of the mould are fixed so as to be immovable in the direction which determines the body of the type, they have great freedom of motion and nicety of adjustment in the direction which determines its width. They can be brought close together, so as to make a hair space, or can be fixed wide apart, so as to cast a three-em quadrat, but they always slide on broad and solid bearings, between guides which keep them from getting out of square.

In the construction of the mould and adjustment of the matrices, every care is taken to insure exactness of body. The illustration on page 52 may be again referred to as an example of the necessity for minute accuracy. We there see that the feasibility of typography depends upon the geometrical exactness of its tools, and that types are of no practical use, if they cannot be readily combined and interchanged.

The casting or founding of types, in a mould constructed like that of the engraving, is now accomplished by a complex machine, the invention of Mr. David Bruce, Jr., of New-York city, and by him patented in the year 1838. Before this date [p059] all types were cast by hand, from a hand-mould, and by a process which received no noticeable improvement for two centuries. The following illustration, taken from an engraving published by an early English type-founder,[13] can be offered as a substantially correct representation of the method of casting which was practised by all type-founders in the first quarter of this century.

[From Moxon.]]

The type-caster took in his left hand the mould, which was imbedded in a wood frame, and shielded about the jet, [p060] to protect him from accidental splashes of melted metal. Then, with his right hand, he took from the melting pot a spoonful of the hot metal, which he quickly poured into the jet or mouth of the mould. At the same instant, with a sudden jerk, he threw up his left hand, so as to aid the melted metal in making a forcible splash against the matrix at the bottom of the mould. This sudden jerk or throw was needed, in the casting of small letters, to make a good face to the type. If it was not done, the metal would cool too quickly, and would not penetrate the finer lines of the matrix. Long practice enabled the type-caster to do this work with apparent carelessness; but the trick of making this throw or cast with the left hand, at the right time and in the right manner, was slowly acquired—by some strong men, never acquired at all. In all cases, hand-casting was hard work. To face types, writes August Bernard, the type-caster must make the contortions of a maniac. It was slow work. Fournier the younger, writing in 1764, says that the performance of the type-caster of ordinary book types would vary from two thousand to three thousand types per day. When this throw was made, the type-caster removed the matrix with his right hand, and, giving the mould a toss, threw out the type. The matrix was then replaced on the mould, and the operations which have been described were repeated in the casting of every subsequent type.

It must be confessed that this method of making types is not simple. It is too circuitous in its processes, and too complex in its machinery, to be regarded as the fruit of the first lucky thought of the inventor. It is a scientific process, manifestly the result of thought and protracted experiment. In its series of impressions, it is an emblem of the art which it has created. The counter-punch impresses the punch, the punch impresses the matrix, the melted metal impresses the matrix and mould. One model letter on the punch is the instrument by which millions of types are made; one letter on a type may serve in the printing of millions of words. [p061]

The punch, matrix and mould are old inventions, but they are still in use in all type-foundries. They have not been changed in any important feature since they were explicitly described and illustrated for the first time, by Joseph Moxon. As Moxon did not claim these implements as his own invention—as we find in the writings of the authors who preceded him notices of the art of cutting letters, and mention of tools “which they called matrices,” and of “making types in brass” [matrices or moulds], we have some reason for the belief that there has never been any radical change in the processes of type-making.