The types of the fifteenth century were made without system. The dimensions of each body and the peculiarities of each face were determined chiefly by the manuscript copy which had been selected as the model. No printer had any idea of the advantages to be derived from a series of regularly graduated sizes, nor of the beauty of a series of uniform faces, nor of the great evils they would impose on themselves and their successors by the use of irregular bodies.[1] A classification by scale of the types of any printer of this period will show that there are often wide gaps between the larger, and confusing proximities between the smaller, bodies.[2]
As the size of every body is determined by the mould in which it is cast, it would seem that there must have been a separate mould for every distinct body.[3] But this inference is encumbered with fatal objections. The type-mould of hard metal is, and always has been, a very expensive tool, and it cannot be supposed that any early printer made two or four moulds for one body when one mould would have served. It
- ↑ Gutenberg's larger bodies were irregularly graduated and of Pointed Gothic face; his smaller bodies were not separated at proper distances, and were of Round Gothic face. The unknown printer had four faces and four bodies of the size English. Caxton had two faces and two bodies each of the sizes Paragon, Great-primer and English. The types of many printers at Paris and Venice show irregularities of body which seem remarkable and inexplicable to the modern printer.
- ↑ The smallest sizes which I have met in any book of the fifteenth century are in the Decretals of Gregory, printed in black and red by Andrew Torresani at Venice in 1498, in which book the text is in Bourgeois and the surrounding notes are in Brevier. Nonpareil was first made by Garamond of Paris about the middle of the sixteenth century. Diamond was made by Jannon of Sedan about 1625. Nothing smaller was attempted until 1827, when Henry Didot, then 66 years old, cut a font on the French body of 2½ points—a body known to American printers as Brilliant, or Half-nonpareil—about twenty-five lines to the American inch.
- ↑ It has been suggested that these distinct bodies were founded in sand moulds; that a new pattern for the body was made every time a new font was cast; and that the irregularities in body are the results of unintended or undetected variations in the pattern. But this hypothesis cannot be accepted. The small bodies, the sharp edges, close fitting-up and even lining of the types, are peculiarities which could not have been produced by a sand mould, nor by a mould of any plastic material.
