Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/39

II

 

Antique Methods of Impression and their Failure.

 

Transfer of Form by Impression one of the Oldest Arts…The Stamped Bricks of Assyria and Egypt…Assyrian Cylinders of Clay…Greek Maps…Roman Theories about Combinations of Letters…Roman Stamps…The Brands and Stamps of the Middle Ages…English Brands. Stamping is not Printing…Ink then used was Unsuitable for Printing…Printing Waited for Discovery of Ink and Paper…Romans did not Need Printing…Printing Depends on a multitude of Readers…Readers were few in the Dark Ages…Invention of Printing was Not purely Mechanical…Printing needs many Supports…Telegraph…Schools…Libraries…Expresses. Post-Offices…A Premature Invention would have been Fruitless.

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The stamps of the ancients, and the impressions from the seals of metal, found in deeds and conveyances of the lower ages, prove nothing more than that mankind walked for many centuries upon the borders of the two great inventions of typography and chalcography, without having the luck to discover either of them, and appear neither to have had any influence on the origin of these arts, nor to merit any place in their history.

Lanzi.

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SOME notice of the material and moral elements needed for the development of typography should precede a description of the work of the early printers. We shall form incorrect notions about the invention of printing unless we know something about the state of the arts of paper-making, ink-making and engraving at the beginning of the fifteenth century. We should also know something about the books and the book-makers of the middle ages. Nor will it be out of place to review the mechanical processes which have been used, almost from the beginning, for the preservation of written language. The review will show us what elements the inventor of typography found at his hand ready for use; what he combined from the inventions of others, and what he invented anew.