Frederick W. Hamilton

“ If we believe that Gutenberg invented printing, we may perhaps see in these words a reference to the invention, although we then marvel why so epoch-making an accomplishment was not specifically mentioned. It is difficult, however, to see why an unconvinced person should be expected to see in such a statement as this any evidence that Gutenberg had invented printing. Certainly there are many other kinds of service which might well have been rendered by one of whom we know so little as we do of Gutenberg. ”

“ Any one who has had any experience in the hand-copying of large amounts of manuscript will see how impossible it is to avoid errors, even with the most careful checking over. It is not probable that any two copies of any manuscript book were ever exactly alike. It is true that the invention of printing did not automatically remove errors. ”

“ In some cases the judgment of the world has probably awarded the glory incorrectly. In other cases the glory has gone, perhaps justly, to that one of two or more discoverers who succeeded in making his invention practically or commercially useful. ”

“ In his Invention of Printing, De Vinne ably maintains the claims of Gutenberg. No one can be more ready than the present writer to pay homage to the greatness of De Vinne and to acknowledge the immense debt which the printers of America owe to him. His series of historical and critical essays on the practice of typography are still unapproachable. In spite of the changes which have taken place in the years since they were written, their substance is not affected excepting in some minor and unimportant details. They are still supreme authority in their field. ”

“ Other work attributed to Gutenberg shows a high degree of excellence. It has always been one of the wonders of invention that so difficult and complicated an art as typography should have sprung into being fully perfected, without trace of imperfect experiment. In the rough page of Coster’s Donatus we clearly see the imperfect beginning—the missing link.
These peculiarities are exactly what we should expect to find in the missing links between the printing of block books and the printing of books from type. The printer is experimenting. ”

“ If we turn to Asia we find that the Chinese and their neighbors, the Japanese and the Coreans, anticipated Europe by many centuries in printing, as well as in other arts. The Chinese appear to have hit upon the device of multiplying books by cutting all the characters needed for a page on a block of wood and then applying the inked block to the paper as early as the sixth century, A. D. Books printed by this process, generally known as block books, were common among the Chinese as early as the tenth century. ”

“ Introduction Many persons and many places have claimed the honor of the invention of typographic printing. That these conflicting claims should be made is the most natural thing in the world. Almost all epoch-making inventions and discoveries are of more or less doubtful origin. ”

“ Each publication has been compiled by a competent author or group of authors, and carefully edited, the purpose being to provide the printers of the United States—employers, journeymen, and apprentices—with a comprehensive series of handy and inexpensive compendiums of reliable, up-to-date information upon the various branches and specialties of the printing craft, all arranged in orderly fashion for progressive study. ”

“ The earliest printers were imitators of the copyists. They made their pages look as much like a manuscript page as they could, not perhaps with intent to 34deceive, but because nothing else occurred to them. You will find that all the earliest types are modeled upon the handwriting current among the copyists of the place where the printing was done. Certainly these books did not come from Mainz. Nobody has ever claimed that they did. Almost equally certainly they did come from Holland and from Haarlem. The handwriting is the handwriting of the Haarlem copyists of the period. ”

“ That Fust and his son-in-law, Schoeffer, did make a financial success of printing, and that further success was made by Bechtermüntz, who is said to have been a relative of Gutenberg and to have inherited type and material from his second shop, and that from Mainz as a center the art of printing spread over the civilized world are beyond question. These are the legends of the invention. ”

“ One, an edition of a book of which there are several editions in Latin, was in Dutch. One was in French. That these forty-seven books all came from Haarlem is pretty clearly shown by certain internal evidence. One of them is clearly placed in Holland by the fact that it was printed in Dutch. Nobody at the very outset of printing would print books in Dutch except a Dutchman. ”

“ Just as the men whose intellectual energies had been absorbed in the petty quarrels of church and state now devoted themselves to constructive thinking, so those whose physical energies had been devoted to the constant succession of small wars of which we have spoken now gave themselves to exploration. ”

“ The Invention The study of the question of the invention of printing, like that of any other historical question, must deal with the examination of three classes of evidence or so many of them as may be available. ”

“ Bed of Hand Press Showing Tympan and Frisket
The first twenty-five years or so of printing have been described as a period of stagnation. They have also been described as the period of the workman. Apparently the vast possibilities of the new art were slow in obtaining recognition. The earliest printers were only mechanics. They had not yet got the 52vision of combining scholarship with their art and so unlocking the treasuries of the world to mankind generally, still less that of adding to the sum total of human knowledge. ”

“ It is probable that such use of color was early thought of as a means of making the impression of the seal more distinct and dispensing with the pressure necessary to force the seal into the substance of the parchment, papyrus, or paper which was being used. Thus through the ages we slowly grow toward a more varied and extensive use of these primitive methods of printing. ”

“ Learning without books is a manifest impossibility. There was a renewed interest in the old books and a great call for copies of them. All this new learning and discovery required books for record and for dissemination. ”

“ At a very early stage the invention was seized upon by another who, with his associates, established a center from which the art steadily grew and developed. So important in its practical results was the work of this man and his associates that he has been for centuries hailed as the inventor of printing. It is needless to say that this man was John Gutenberg.
In the judgment of the present writer, however, the claim that Gutenberg invented typographic printing cannot be maintained. The discussion has been long and sometimes bitter. ”

“ Color being essential to playing cards, the development thus outlined was the most natural. It has been supposed that the comparatively small playing card was first made and that the image print was derived from the playing card. There now seems 25no question that the process was the other way about, as there are no printed playing cards known as early as the St. Christopher above referred to. The block-printed playing card seems to have been clearly an imitation of the image print, and not the image print an evolution from the playing card. ”

“ It appears to show conclusively that Gutenberg had not done any printing before 1450, and had not at that time even made the tools with which to print. In this document Fust speaks of “the work” and “our common work.” Gutenberg speaks of “tools” in preparation. Clearly he is borrowing money in order to make tools. He speaks further of “servants’ wages, house rent, vellum, paper, ink, etc.” and of “the work of the books.” The judges speak of “the work to the profit of both of them,” “their common use,” and the like. There is not a word which speaks distinctly of an invention. ”

“ A vast store of knowledge had been accumulated and additions were being made with tremendous rapidity, but there was no adequate means of getting this knowledge before the people. At the same time there were more people intensely eager for knowledge than ever before. ”

“ Often, also like the blossoms on a plant, only one produces what the gardener calls a “set,” that is, a fruit which ripens and matures seed for reproduction. The state of human knowledge or the pressure of human need may be such that many students are at work at the same time upon problems which seem to demand solution. ”

“ The introduction of typography represents probably a step toward the reduction of this great number of characters to a comparatively small number representing the sounds or syllables most in use. A font of Chinese type is a fearful and wonderful thing, and learning the case for Chinese composition is a task which very few western people would care to undertake.
Modern Chinese Type Case
The accompanying illustration shows a Chinese compositor at his case in the Lakeside Press, Chicago. The “frame” contains one complete font of approximately seven thousand characters. ”

“ He is said to have been strolling in the woods near Haarlem one day and to have cut some pieces of birch bark in the form of letters. With some of these letters dipped in ink he made marks on parchment or paper and found that he could combine them and recombine them so as to make words and sentences. He then began experimenting in earnest. His first letters were carved out of wood, then he made them out of lead, and at last out of tin. Finding the ink used by the copyists unsatisfactory he invented an ink of more viscous kind better suited to the work in hand. ”

“ If, however, for the sake of the argument we admit that he printed nearly or quite all of the works that are attributed to him we find that they are all much better in workmanship and appearance than the Haarlem books. None of them are printed on one side of the page only, excepting, of course, small matters which would not cover more than one page, and there are no signs whatever 42of transition from any previous type of printing to typography. Those who have accepted the theory of Gutenberg’s invention have marveled at the perfection of his work, as well they might. ”

“ The Italian states had rallied more quickly from the barbarian invasions which overthrew the Roman Empire than the rest of Europe and their progress in civilization had been very remarkable when one considers the civil wars and wars between small states which had been almost continuous. ”

“ He saw the sacrifice of Isaac, the Massacre of the Innocents, the Crucifixion, the Martyrdom of St. Stephen, and all the other Bible stories visibly expressed. He saw the statues of kings and bishops and was told the meaning of the scenes in which these and other characters were represented in picture or sculpture. He thus read and reread the statues, stained glass windows, and sculptures of his church as we read and reread our Bibles and our histories. Many carvings and pictures were put into the churches which we should today consider entirely out of place. ”

“ The demands of the human mind were pressing hard against the physical boundaries to progress created by the methods of book-making then in use. It must be remembered that men were still making books just as they had done for nearly two thousand years. ”

“ We find represented scenes which recall the current fables of the time and sometimes pictures of scenes ridiculous or even indecent, according to modern ideas, which satirized the vices and faults of men and women while they warned against them. ”

“ In this way the theory of evolution, whose adoption, revolutionizing as it did the entire system of human thinking, was the most important event of the nineteenth century, was independently discovered by Darwin and Wallace, who were working at the same time along independent lines of investigation. ”

“ We have here the lines of development which led directly to the invention of typography. We have 24already mentioned books printed from plates with pictures without text, pictures with text, and text without pictures. What would be more natural than to cut off the part of the block containing the text and use the picture alone, or to combine the text with text cut from another block or with another picture from which the text had been removed? ”

“ Great numbers of these books were printed and circulated, especially in Holland and Germany.
The other development was the printing of whole pages of text. Certain books were in great demand. The advantage of being able to reproduce them quickly and cheaply was obvious. The two best known are alphabet books for beginners called Abecederia, or Abecederium in the singular, and the elementary Latin grammars abstracted from the works of an old Latin grammarian named Donatus. ”

“ Care has been taken to make all statements accurate and clear, with the purpose of bringing essential information within the understanding of beginners in the different fields of study. Wherever practicable, simple and well-defined drawings and illustrations have been used to assist in giving additional clearness to the text. ”