compositors, says Madden, in the heroic age of printing, were not boys, but men of education and intelligence. The early printers who were taught the business that they might become masters had to pay a premium for their education.[1] In the brief time that they gave to the work, their education must have been more theoretical than practical. As the branch of composition required the largest number of workmen, and more intelligence, and less manual labor than any other, it was usually selected by the pupil for practice. Of type-casting and presswork he learned no more than was sufficient to enable him to direct the labors of his future workmen. The knowledge of the trade which the pupil coveted was the ability to practise it on his own account, and this knowledge was, in most instances, satisfactorily acquired when he got a theoretical knowledge of its secret processes.
The frequent specification of the formen in the earliest notices of printing shows that the mould, with its accompanying matrices, was regarded as the key to the knowledge and practice of the art. As the moulds were made by master mechanics, not bound to secrecy, and as the earlier compositors had some knowledge of the process of type-casting, it was not difficult for a journeyman to become a master printer. When he had bought a type-mould and matrices, he could go to any city and begin to print books. He could cast types and mix ink as he needed them; he could buy paper and the constituents of type-metal in any large town; properly instructed, any joiner could make the press.[2]
The annexed illustration, a fac-simile of one of Amman's engravings of a printing office, is from his book dated 1564.
- ↑ Caxton said that he had "practysed & learned at [his] grete charge and dispense to ordeyne this said booke in prynte."
- ↑ Many of the early master printers practised their trade for a few years in one place, and a few years in another, roving about from town to town with a seeming indifference to change which seems unaccountable to the modern printer, who knows how expensive it is to move a printing office. The roving habits of the masters will not seem so strange when it is known that the equipment of the early office was simple, and that the more expensive tools could be carried with little difficulty.
