John Henry Hessels, John Southward, and Hugh Munro Ross

“ We quote his theories as coming from such a qualified type-founder, and because they have made some impression in certain quarters, but they lead us away from the real points connected with the invention of printing. First of all the “casting of metal types” is not, as he thinks, the first stage in the invention; its beginning, its essence is, and has always been thought to be, the movability of the characters. This movability, and the accidental way in which it was discovered, form together the pith of the Haarlem tradition as told by Junius. ”

“ Our evidence, though still circumstantial, is not based on guesses; we assert nothing except on bibliographical or historical grounds; nor do we accept one statement unless it is corroborated by other statements, or by the rules of bibliography and history. Hence we should not accept Zell's evidence or that of Junius, or of any one else, if the books to which they refer did not corroborate them to the fullest extent, or if the claims of Mainz to the honour of the invention could be said to have any substance of fact. ”

“ In modern printing it is often the case that the printing surface actually used in the press (see Printing) is not the original forme of type, whether consisting of separate type set up by machine or by hand, or of Linotype slugs, but a reproduction of it made by electrotyping or by stereotyping. ”

“ But two Latin alphabets (of steel) and one Hebrew alphabet (of iron) would not suffice for composing and printing more than two or three words on any one page at a time, so that a person with such a small quantity of letters at his command would, in several respects, be worse off than a scribe. Hence the documents which only refer to the art of writing, mean nothing more serious than an art of taking impressions of certain letters (perhaps initials or capitals) in a more regular and steady fashion than even trained scribes could produce them by hand. ”

“ As we cannot regard types which differ in form as “developments” of one type, we must deal with three types in column A, that is (1) the so-called Donatus type; (2) the Kalendar type; (3) the 36-line Bible type, besides the two employed for the Indulgence31. Gutenberg’s career, and the straightened circumstances in which he appears to have lived, so far as they are known to us, make it difficult to ascribe them all to him.
More than thirty documents have come to light which enable us to trace Johan Gutenberg from 1420 to 1468. ”

“ In this case Gutenberg would not be the inventor of the cast letter. But the Dutch could not claim, with Enschedé, the honour of the invention of movable metal types. They invented the casting of letters, but it would be Gutenberg's merit to have invented the movable cast types. At any rate he would be the inventor of the
casting instrument whereby the letter with the staff became independent, that is movable. ”

“ They have the advantage that corrections can be made as with hand-set type; but for newspaper work the fact that the manipulation of the keyboard does not, as with the Linotype, directly produce a printing surface but merely a punched strip of paper, which has then to be passed through a separate casting machine, inevitably introduces some delay. This is a matter that must be taken into account in the hurried conditions under which a daily paper is produced, when the shortest possible interval must elapse between the time when the latest news is received and the actual printing is begun. ”

“ A printer so carefully and economically husbanding his stock of sheets is not likely to have printed new editions of his books before the old ones were fully sold off, or to have manufactured new types till his old ones were used up. Moreover, Haarlem, a quiet provincial town, could not have been a favourable market for a rapid sale of books, especially not for books in the vernacular, like the Dutch versions of the Speculum. ”

“ But to set up duplicate formes of type is impracticable, and, therefore, this device does not permit the utilization of more than one press. Herein lies the second great advantage of stereotyping, for it enables the printer to obtain as many replicas of each forme as he desires, and thus not only to employ a number of machines simultaneously, but also to “dress” each of them with several duplicates of the same forme, as is required in the later developments of high-speed presses. ”

“ The great efforts made in Germany since 1882 to strengthen the case for Gutenberg, which culminated in the celebrations of 1900 and the publication of valuable and learned books, have enriched our knowledge of early Mainz and German printing, but at the same time conclusively shown that it requires great courage to maintain that Gutenberg was the inventor of printing. ”

“ Up to
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. ”

“ Hence the idea of separate movable characters was not the invention of printing, but the art of casting them, and this was a work not for the block-printer, but for another industry, for a foundry.
From the types of B36 and B42 Enschedé concludes that Gutenberg's punches (patrices) were made, like the bookbinders' stamps, of yellow copper (brass, Germ. Messing) . With such patrices only leaden matrices could be made, but the latter could be produced in two ways: the lead can be poured over the patrix, or the patrix be pressed into cold lead. ”

“ As no reply invalidating the main part of his criticism emanated from Haarlem, Henry Bradshaw, the librarian at Cambridge, who had been studying the Dutch incunabula for some years, accepted Van der Linde's conclusions, and published, in 1871, his List of the founts of type used by printers in Holland in the 15th century, in which he explained that he was compelled to place the printer of the Speculum at Utrecht because “it is there that the cuts of the old folio editions first appear cut up into pieces in a book (Epistelen ende Evangelien) printed by Veldener at that place in 1481. ”

“ How long Coster or his successors continued the first printing office at Haarlem we cannot say; it seems to have come to an end in or before 1481, as the cuts of the Speculum had evidently then passed into John Veldener's hands, and the Haarlem tradition says that wine-pots had been cast of the remains of the types. In 1483 Jacob Bellaert was printing at Haarlem, and Jan Andrieszn in 1485; their types are imitations of the writing of their time, but already differ from those of the Speculum and the other Costeriana in various respects, and show many features of a later period. ”

“ One is to manufacture ordinary movable types at a cost that is less than that of distribution, when it obviously becomes advantageous to treat the formes, after use, as old metal and return them directly to the melting pot without distribution. In 1900 The Times began to adopt this method, thus securing the advantage of fresh new type for each issue. In its offices for several years type made by the Wicks casting machine was set up by composing machines, and after being used in making the necessary stereotype plates was returned to the foundry to be melted and recast. ”

“ Manufacture of Type.—Type is made of an alloy, known as type-metal, which consists chiefly of lead, with smaller amounts of antimony and tin. The exact proportions vary in different countries and foundries and with the size and quality of the type, but in general more than 60% is lead and the antimony predominates over the tin. Sometimes small quantities of other metals, such as copper and iron, are added. Large letters, such as are used for bills and posters do not come within the province of the type-founder ”

“ 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. ”

“ Johannes Andreae, bishop of Aleria, says, in the dedication of his edition of St Jerome's Epistles, published in that year (Dec. 13,) at Rome, to Pope Paul II., that “Germany is to be honoured for ever as having been the inventress of the greatest utilities. Cardinal Cusa wished that the sacred art of printing, which then (under Cardinal Cusa, who died on the 11th of August 1464) seemed to have arisen in Germany, were brought to Rome.” ”

“ First the letter itself on a small plate; then the plate placed underneath a casting form, to fix it to a small shank, which was to be cast into the form and would make, with the plate, the exact height of the letter. The letter on the plate was made not by pouring the metal into the matrix, but by beating the latter into the molten metal. When lead is heated so as to be a soft mass it easily assumes the form of any object which falls on or in it, therefore also of the matrix, which is the image of the engraved type. ”

“ In 1566 Luigi Guicciardini, a Florentine nobleman, who had visited the Netherlands and had resided many years at Antwerp, finished a description of the Netherlands (published in 1567) , in which, alluding to Haarlem, he speaks of the invention there according to the assertions of the inhabitants, the evidence of some authors, and other remembrances; the inventor died before the perfection of his art; his servant went to Mainz, where he perfected the art, and hence the report that it was invented there. ”

“ The modern printer has recourse to the type-founder. The first step in the making of type, according to the old method, is the production of a matrix. The letter is cut on the end of a piece of Matrices for Type. fine steel, forming the punch (fig. 2) , which is afterwards hardened. A separate punch is required for each character in every fount of type, and the making of them requires great care and delicacy in order that the various sorts in a fount may be exactly uniform in width, height and general proportions. ”

“ As this transformation is possible and probable there seems to be no reason for departing from the simple but clear Haarlem tradition as we read it in Junius.
In the infancy of printing every printer, in different countries and different towns, starts with his own types; hence we may conclude that he had learnt the art of engraving and casting them himself, and so combined the art of type-founding with that of printing. This points back to a combination of the two or three arts in the first printing-office. ”

“ Zedler's theories, partly developments, partly corrections of those of Enschedé's, are based on the misapprehension that a peculiarity in the Costerian types, i.e. the connexion of the signs of contractions by a fine stroke with the letters over which they stand, does not occur either in the Dutch blockbooks or in the Dutch MSS. This connexion, however, far from being not found, is a conspicuous feature, in the Dutch blockbooks and MSS., and being faithfully reproduced in the Costerian types, shows how near these types stand to the block-printing and MS. periods. ”

“ If the work is not “solid”—that is, if the lines are not close together—the strips of metal called leads or brasses are inserted between each. When the composing stick is filled, the type is lifted upon a galley, a shallow tray of wood or metal, two or three sides of which are flanged, for the purpose of supporting the type when the galley is slightly inclined. Stickful after stickful of type is placed on the galley until it is full. The matter is then fastened up, a proof taken at the proof press, and the work of the reader or corrector of the press begins (see Proof-reading) . ”

“ In machines of the Linotype class, which have come into extensive use, especially for newspaper printing, it is impossible to make corrections or alterations in the line of type after it has been cast. The smallest change, such as the addition of a comma, involves the resetting and recasting of a whole line, while, if two or three words have to be added or removed, the compositor may have to recast a considerable number of lines perhaps a whole paragraph. ”

“ The types of B36 and B42 may be ascribed to Germany, but as both are used for the printing of a Bible and editions of Donatus, it is improbable that the printer of B42 and one set of Donatuses should manufacture, about the same time, another type for another Bible and another set of Donatuses. We have shown above that B42 must, on bibliographical grounds, be ascribed to Peter Schoeffer at Mainz, and as he used its type for a book which actually bears his name, all the other books in the same type must be ascribed to him. ”

“ We should also understand why the Dutch, though knowing the art of casting types, only printed Donatuses and similar small schoolbooks, for which there was much demand, for in the present day, stereotype-printing is likewise used for books which, when editions follow each other rapidly, have to be printed unaltered. ”

“ The flong is next dried, for which purpose it is either placed with the type in a heated chamber covered with blankets which absorb the moisture, or is removed from the type and heated separately. Sometimes these two methods are used in combination; processes have also been devised for pressing the flong dry upon the type, when subsequent drying becomes unnecessary. For casting a plate the matrix thus prepared is fastened in a casting mould or box curved to the circumference of the cylinder of the press, and molten stereo-metal (a softer form of type-metal) is poured upon it. ”

“ The ribs of the distributor bar are so arranged as to support each matrix by one or more pairs of teeth until it arrives opposite the mouth of its own magazine channel, where they are interrupted in such a manner that the matrix is unsupported and drops into the magazine for further use. It will thus be apparent that there is a constant circulation of the matrices through the machine, and the composing of one line, the casting of another and the distribution of a third are all carried on at the same time, which adds greatly to the speed of the operation. ”

“ That art means the multiplication of books or documents by means of an adequate quantity of single types for composing a whole page of text, and capable of being taken asunder and used again for a second, a third and a multitude of other pages, and so produce a number of copies of a book in the same or a shorter time than a scribe with his pen could produce one copy. ”

“ The printing surfaces used in the production of books and newspapers, apart from wood- or process-blocks and casts, and apart also from such surfaces as are obtained by means of the Linotype and kindred machines, are made up primarily of an aggregation of separate types, each representing a letter, mark or sign, though the actual surface employed on the printing press is frequently a duplicate copy made by a process of stereotyping or electrotyping. ”