the present time no book or document has come to light which can be asserted to have been printed from single, movable, wooden types. But we have seen above that the Haarlem tradition, as told by Junius, distinctly points to such types having been used for, among other things, the first edition of the Dutch Spiegel, and no one examining this edition (of, which two copies are preserved at Haarlem) would deny that there are grounds for this belief; the dancing condition of the lines and letters making it almost impossible to think that they are metal types. For how long and to what extent such types were employed, if at all, we cannot say.
The other theory would have it that between block-printing and printing with movable cast types there was an intermediate stage Sculpto-fusi Types. of printing with “sculpto-fusi” types, that is, types of which the shanks had been cast in a quadrilateral mould, and the “faces,” i.e. the characters or letters, engraved by hand afterwards. This theory was suggested by some who could not believe in wooden types and yet wished to account for the marked irregularities in the types of the earliest printed books.
Gerardus Meerman, the chief champion of this theory, based it, not only on the words of Celtes (Amores, iii. 3). who in 1502 described Mainz as the city “quae prima sculpsit solidos aere characteres,” but on the frequent recurrence of the word sculptus in the colophons of the early printers (for Jenson and Husner of Strassburg, see p. 514 above). Sensenschmid in 1475 said that the Codex Justinianus was “cut” (insculptus), and that he had “cut” (sculpsit) the work of Lombardus, In Psalterium. Meerman also interpreted the account of the invention of printing by Trithemius[1] as meaning that, after the rejection of the first wooden types, the inventors discovered a method of casting the bodies only of all the letters of the Latin alphabet from what they called matrices, on which they cut the face of each letter; and from the same kind of matrices a method was in time discovered of casting the complete letters of sufficient hardness for the pressure they had to bear, which letters they were before—that is, when the bodies only were cast—obliged to cut.[2] In this way Meerman explained that the Speculum was printed in sculpto-fusi types, although in the one page of which he gives a facsimile there are nearly 1700 separate types, of which 250 alone are e's. Schoepflin claimed the same invention for Strassburg, and believed that all the earliest books printed there were produced by this means. Meerman and Schoepflin agreed that engraved metal types (literae in aere sculptae) were in use for many years after the invention of the punch and matrix, mentioning among others so printed the Mainz psalter, the Catholicon of 1460, the Eggestein Bible of 1468, and even the Praeceptorium of Nider, printed at Strassburg in 1476. But the difficulty connected with the process of first casting the shanks and afterwards engraving the faces of the types has become apparent to those who have made experiments; and it seems more probable that the terms sculpere, exsculpere, insculpere, are only a figurative allusion to the first process towards producing the types, namely, the cutting of the punch, which is artistically more important to the fabrication of types than the mechanical casting—all the more as Schoeffer in 1468 makes his Grammatica vetus rhythmica say, “I am cast at Mainz,” an expression which could hardly be anything but a figurative allusion to the casting of the types.
Granting that all the earlier works of typography preserved to us are impressions of cast-metal types, there are still differences of Types Cast in Sand. opinion, especially among practical printers and type-founders, as to the probable methods employed to cast them. It is considered unlikely that the inventor of printing passed all at once to the perfect typography of the punch, the matrix and the mould. Bernard[3] thought tht the types of the Speculum were cast in sand, as that art was certainly known to the silversmiths and trinket-makers of the 15th century; and he accounts for the varieties observable in the shapes of various letters on the ground that several models would probably be made of each letter, and that the types, when cast by this imperfect mode, would require some touching up or finishing by hand. He exhibits a specimen of a word cast for him by this process which not only proves the possibility of casting types in this manner, but also shows the same kind of irregularities as those observable in the types of the Speculum.
But here again it is argued that in types cast by this or any other primitive method there would be an absence of uniformity in what founders term “height to paper.” Some types would stand higher than others, and the low ones, unless raised, would miss the ink and not appear in the impression. The comparative rarity of faults of this kind in the Speculum leads one to suppose that, if a process of sand-casting had been adopted, the difficulty of uneven heights had been surmounted either by locking up the forme face downwards, or by perforating the types, either at the time of casting or afterwards, and holding them in their places by means of a thread or wire. To this cause Ottley attributed the numerous misprints in the Speculum, to correct which would have involved the unthreading of every line in which an error occurred. And, as a still more striking proof that the lines were put into the forme one by one, in a piece, he shows a printer's blunder at the end of page 42 in the unmixed Dutch edition, where the whole of the last reference-line is put in upside down, thus:—
A “turn” of this magnitude could hardly have occurred if the letters had been set in the forme type by type.
A second suggested mode is that of casting in clay moulds, by a method very similar to that used in the sand process, and resulting in similar peculiarities and variations in the types.
Types Cast in Clay Moulds. Ottley, who was the chief exponent of this theory, suggested that the types were made by pouring melted lead or other soft metal into moulds of earth or plaster, the ordinary manner used from time immemorial in casting statues of bronze and other articles of metal. But the mould thus formed could hardly avail for a second casting, as it-would be scarcely possible to extract the type after casting without breaking the clay, and, even if that could be done, the shrinking of the metal in cooling would be apt to warp the mould beyond the possibility of further use. Ottley therefore suggests that the constant renewal of the moulds could be effected by using old types cast out of them, after being touched up by the graver, as models-a process which he thinks will account for the varieties observable in the different letters, but which would really cause such a gradual deterioration and attenuation in the type, as the work of casting progressed, that in the end it would leave the face of the letter unrecognizable as that with which it began. It would, therefore, be more reasonable to suppose that one set of models would be used for the preparation of all the moulds necessary for the casting of a sufficient number of types to compose a page, and for the periodical renewal of the moulds all through the work, and that the variations in the types would be due, not to the gradual paring of the faces of the models, but to the different skill and exactness with which the successive moulds would be taken.
It is evident that the sand and clay methods of casting types above described would be slow. The time occupied after the first engraving of the models in forming, drying and clearing the moulds, in casting, extracting, touching up and possibly perforating the types required for one page, would exceed the time required by a practised xylographer for the cutting of a page of text upon a block. But he that has gone through the trouble of casting separate movable types has a clear gain over the wood-block printer in having a fount of movable types, which, even if the metal in which they were cast were only soft lead or pewter, might be used again and again in the production of any other page of text, while the wood block can only produce the one page which it contains. Moreover, only one hand could labour on the xylographic block; but many hands could be employed in the moulding and casting of types, however rude they might be. Bernard states that the artist who produced for him the few sand-cast types shown in his work assured him that a workman could easily produce a thousand such letters a day. He also states that, though each letter required squaring after casting, there was no need to touch up the faces.
A third suggestion was made as to the method in which the types of the rude school may have been produced. This may Polytope. be described as a system of what the founders of about 1800 called polytype, which is a cast or facsimile copy of an engraved block, matter in type, &c.
Lambinet,[4] who is responsible for the suggestion, based upon a new translation of Trithemius's narrative, explains that this process really means an early adoption of stereotype. He thinks that the first printers may have discovered a way of moulding a page of some work—an Abecedarium—in cooling metal, so as to get a matrix-plate impression of the whole page. Upon this matrix they would pour a liquid metal, and by the aid of a roller or cylinder press the fused matter evenly, so as to make it penetrate into all the hollows and corners of the letters. This tablet of tin or lead, being easily lifted and detached from the matrix, would then appear as a surface of metal in which the letters of the alphabet stood, out reversed and in relief. These letters could easily be detached and rendered mobile by a knife or other sharp instrument, and the operation could be repeated a hundred times a day. The metal faces so produced would be fixed on wooden shanks, type high, and the fount would then be complete, Lambinet's hypothesis was endorsed by Firmin-Didot, the renowned type-founder and printer of Lambinet's day. But it is impossible to suppose that the Mainz psalter of 1457, which these writers point to as a specimen of this mode of execution, is the impression, not of type at all, but of a collection of “casts” mounted on wood.
Yet another theory has been proposed by Dr Ch. Enschedé, head of the celebrated type foundry of the same name at Haarlem, who says (pp. 15 sqq. of his Technisch onderzoek naar de uitvinding van de Boekdrukkunst, 1901), that the principle of a printing surface
- ↑ Annales Hirsaugienses, ii. 421: “Post haec inventis successerunt subtiliora, inveneruntque modum fundendi formas omnium Latini alphabeti literarum, quas ipsi matrices nominabant, ex quibus rursum aeneos sive stanneos characteres fundebant, ad omnem pressuram sufficientes, quos prius manibus sculpebant.”
- ↑ Origines typographicae, app. p. 47 (The Hague, 1765).
- ↑ Origins de l'imprimerie, i. 40.
- ↑ Orig. de l'imprimerie i. 97 (2 vols. 8vo., Paris, 1810).
