Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/533

The case for the type is of one piece and is resting on a rude frame. All the boxes are represented as of the same size, but this is probably an error, for it is an error which is frequently made by designers of this day.^[1] In this, and in many other early illustrations of type-setting, the compositors are seated on stools. In Italy and in Paris, women were employed as
Presswork and Composition as done in 1564.
[From Jost Amman.]compositors. In the wood-cut used by Jodocus Badius^[2] for a trade- mark, we see a hard-featured dame before a narrow case, composing types with judicial deliberation. She has in her left hand a narrow composing stick, made to hold but two or three lines of small types. The early stick was not like the neatly finished iron tool of our time, with steel composing rule and an adjustable screw and knee adapting it to any measure. It was a real stick of wood, a home-made strip of deal, with the side and end-piece tacked on. For every measure, a new stick or a retacking of the movable piece was required. The date of the introduction of the stick cannot be fixed, but it was used, without alteration for many years, by the printers of all countries. It is possible that some of the early printers

1. The engravings of cases shown by Moxon have boxes of unequal size. No doubt, they were so made from the beginning, for a day's experience would teach any compositor that his case must have a larger box for the letter e than for the letter x.
2. See page 528.