From Xylographs to Lead Molds; A.D. 1440-A.D. 1921

by H. C. Forster

FOREWORD

Printing has been called “the art preservative of all arts.” The invention of individual movable cast-metal type, between A. D. 1440 and 1446, made printing a commercial possibility.

The subsequent rapid spread of the art, in the hands of students and craftsmen, may be said to have been the centrifugal force of the Renaissance and the Revival of Learning, which age, if it can be chronologically delimited, began A. D. 1453.

Printing divulged to the masses the ancient classics which had been locked up in monasteries and accessible only to clerics and the nobility. The common people began to read. Education became popularized.

This brochure is a brief history of the evolution from xylographs to the methods used today for duplicating a typographical printing surface in a solid piece.

INDIVIDUAL
MOVABLE CAST-METAL TYPE

The art of writing, and that of printing from wooden blocks, and all the subsidiary arts of illuminating, decorating and binding manuscripts and books, had long passed out of the exclusive hands of the monasteries into the hands of students and artisans, before printing with individual movable cast-metal type was invented. This epoch making invention came into practical use between A. D. 1440 and 1446.

When, therefore, Johannes Koelhoff of Lubeck, Germany, printed the “Cologne Chronicle” in 1499, he used individual movable cast-metal type. Typographic printing had long before superseded Xylographic printing, that is, printing from a solid block of wood on which type of an entire page were cut individually by hand.

Between the invention of individual movable cast-metal type and the perfection by the Earl of Stanhope of his printing-press, (a period of about three hundred and sixty years), very few improvements had been made in the mechanics of printing. Everything we know today about the art has come into use since 1799, and if Koelhoff had come to life in 1799 and been permitted to resume his occupation of printer, he would have found himself practically familiar with the mechanical equipment of his craft as used in the establishment of the Stanhope Press in that last year of the eighteenth century.

Centuries before 1440 printing is believed to have been attempted in China; presumably about the beginning of the Christian era. It is said that in the year A. D. 175 the text of the Chinese classics was cut into tablets which were erected outside the national university at Peking, and that impressions—probably rubbings—were taken of them. Some of these fac-simile impressions are still in existence, it is asserted.

Xylography was also practiced in China long before Europe knew the art. It can be traced as far back as the sixth century, when the founder of the Suy dynasty is said to have had the remains of the Chinese classics engraved on wood, though it was not until the tenth century that printed books became common in China.

The authorities of the British Museum also report that Chinese writers give the name of a certain Pi Sheng who, in the eleventh century, invented movable type, and the Department of Oriental Printed Books and Manuscripts of the same institution possesses a copy of the Wen hsien tung Kao, a Chinese encyclopedia printed in Korea from movable type in A. D. 1337.

To the Koreans also is attributed the invention of copper type in the beginning of the 15th century, and the inspection of books bearing the dates of that period seems to show that they used such type, even if they did not invent them.

The first authentic European printing produced from individual movable type of which we have any recorded impression, bears the date of A. D. 1454. These documents are two different editions of the same Letters of Indulgence issued in that year by Pope Nicholas V. in behalf of the Kingdom of Cyprus. We do not know, however, whether they were printed from metal or wood type.

As to the exact date of the invention of printing from individual movable type in Europe, we know only that it was some time prior to A. D. 1454. Where and by whom the invention came about, a dispute has been waged for more than four hundred years; one of the most hotly contested questions in history. In short, Koelhoff was in part responsible for starting this dispute. He published in his “Cologne Chronicle” a statement by Ulrich Zell, a printer of Mainz in Germany and a contemporary of Gutenberg, that Gutenberg had improved, but not invented the art, which he attributes to Coster of Haarlem, in the Netherlands, in the year 1440. Gutenberg stole Coster’s type, according to Zell, and printed from them in 1442. Other unrefutable evidence shows that Gutenberg could not have begun printing at Mainz before the end of 1450.

In addition to Gutenberg and Coster we also find Waldfoghel of Avignon, in France, and Castaldi of Felte, in Italy, mentioned as claimants of this invention. The value of their respective pretensions has been summed up by one well known authority in the words, “Holland has books, but no documents. France has documents, but no books. Italy has neither books, nor documents, while Germany has both books and documents.” As the case stands at present, after careful and impartial examination of all available evidence, no choice is left but to attribute the invention of printing with individual movable cast-metal type to Lourens Janszoon Coster of Haarlem in the Netherlands between the years 1440 and 1446 and not to Gutenberg of Mainz in Germany.

Zell’s statement in the “Cologne Chronicle” of 1499 is further substantiated by Hadrianus Junius in his “Batavia.” Junius stated that printing from individual movable type was invented by Coster in Haarlem, and that the “Speculum Humanae Salvationes” was one of his first productions. These two statements were made independently of each other and both are corroborated by books to which they refer.

The “Speculum Humanae Salvationes,” attributed to Coster by Junius was partly a folio Latin block-book, and partly typographically printed. From this and other records it has been clearly established that Coster began as a xylographer and ended as a typographical printer, and before 1472 he had manufactured and extensively used at least seven different styles of primitive looking individual movable cast-metal type.

According to tradition, while he was walking in a wood near Haarlem, Coster cut some letters in the bark of a beech tree, and with them, reversely impressed one by one on paper, he composed one or two lines as an example for the children of his son-in-law.

Junius does not say it, but clearly implies that, in this way, Coster came to the idea of the movability of the characters, the first step in the invention of typography. He perceived the advantage and utility of such insulated characters, which hitherto he had been cutting together on one block, and so the invention of printing with individual movable type was made.

The questions as to whether he continued to print with movable “wooden” type, or even printed books with them, cannot be answered, because no such books or fragments of them have come down to us. Junius’ words on this point are ambiguous, and yet, upon the examination of the first edition of the Dutch Spiegel (of which two copies are preserved at Haarlem) no one would deny that there are grounds for this belief. The dancing condition of the lines and letters make it almost impossible to think that they are impressions from metal type. But for how long and to what extent movable wooden type were employed, if at all, cannot be positively stated.

However, this idea of movability, and the accidental way in which it was discovered, form together the pith of the Haarlem tradition as told by Junius. Nothing seems more natural than that a block-printer should cut such separate letters as Coster did on the bark of a tree and thereupon perceive that they could be used over and over again for a variety of words on different pages, while those which he used to cut in a solid block only served him for one page and for one purpose.

It is equally clear from the Haarlem tradition that the art of casting metal type was the second stage in the invention, a development or outcome of the primary idea of “movable letters,” for Junius says that Coster “afterwards changed the beechen characters into leaden, and the latter again into tin ones.”

Theod. Bibliander, in 1548, was the first to speak of movable wooden type and to describe them. First they cut their letters, he reports, on wood blocks the size of an entire page; but because the labor and cost of that way was so great, they devised movable wooden type, perforated and joined one to another by a thread.

Bibliander does not say that he had ever seen such type himself, but Dan Speckle or Specklin (d. 1589) who ascribed the invention to Mentelin, asserts that he saw some of these wooden type at Straussburg; and Angelo Roccho asserted in 1591 that he had seen at Venice type perforated and joined one to another by a thread, but he does not state whether they were of wood or of metal.

There is a theory also that between block-printing and printing with movable cast-metal type there was an intermediate stage of printing with “sculpto-fusi” type; that is, a type of which the shank had to be cast in a quadrilateral mold and the characters or letters engraved afterwards by hand. This theory was suggested by some one who could not believe in wooden type and yet wished to account for the marked irregularities of the type used to print the earliest books.

Granting that all the earlier works of typography preserved to us are impressions of cast-metal type, there are still differences of opinion, especially among practical printers and type-founders, as to the probable methods employed to cast them. It is considered unlikely, although not impossible, that the invention of printing passed all at once from xylography to the perfect typography of the punch, matrix, and mold.

The types that Coster made and used were supposed to have been manufactured in one of three or four probable ways.

Bernard believed that the first movable cast-metal type were molded in sand, since that method of casting was known to the silversmiths and trinket-makers of the fifteenth century. In substantiation of his theory he exhibits a specimen of a word cast as a unit for him by this process, roughly similar to a modern linotype slug.

A second suggested mode was that of casting in clay molds, by a method very similar to that used in the sand process, and resulting in like peculiarities and variations in the type.

Ottley, in his “Invention of Printing,” was the chief exponent of this theory. He believed that type were made by pouring molten lead into molds of clay or plaster, after the ordinary manner used from time immemorial in casting statues and other articles of metal.

The imperfections in the type cast by the sand and clay processes—the difficulty of uneven heights in the various type—is supposed to have been surmounted either by locking up the form with the type-face downward on the composing stone, or by perforating the type, either at the time of casting or afterwards, and holding them in their places by means of a wire or thread through the perforations.

To this cause has been attributed the numerous misprints in those early specimens of the printers’ art, to correct which would have involved the unthreading of every line in which a typographical error occurred.

A striking proof that the lines were put into the form one by one, as a piece, instead of type by type, is shown in a blunder in the “Speculum” of Coster where the whole of a last reference line is “turned.” It is as if a modern linotype slug were put in the form up-side-down.

A third suggestion as to the method by which the type of those early days of printing may have been produced is described as a system that the type-founders of about 1800 called Polytypage, which is a cast facsimile copy of an engraved block of type matter. Lambinet, who is responsible for this suggestion, explains that this method really means an early adoption of the stereotyping process.

Lambinet thought that the early printers may have discovered a way of molding in cooling metal so as to get a matrix-plate impression of an entire page. Upon this matrix they would pour molten lead or tin and by the aid of a roller, press the fused metal evenly so as to make it penetrate into all the hollows and corners of the letters. This tablet of lead or tin, when cooled, being easily detached from the matrix, would then reveal the letters of the alphabet reversed and in relief, similar to a present day stereotype. The individual letters, of course, could easily be cut apart by a sharp tool, and the molding operation could be repeated, using the same matrix. The metal type faces so produced would be fixed on wooden shanks, type high, and the font would be complete.

It is impossible to suppose, however, that the Mainz psalter of 1457, which Lambinet points to as a specimen of this mode of execution, is the impression, not of type at all, but a collection of “casts” mounted on wood.

Yet another theory has been proposed by Dr. Ch. Enschede, head of the celebrated type foundry of that name in Haarlem. Enschede concludes that the Costerian type were produced from leaden matrices and the latter from brass patrices. Their bad, irregular condition was due to the tools being imperfect, and Coster in the first practice of his invention was inexperienced and therefore bound to produce such imperfections as are found in the Speculum. Coster’s type were cast in one tempo, that is, the character itself and the shank cast at the same time in one piece.

Gutenberg’s patrices, according to Enschede, were made like bookbinders’ stamps, of yellow copper, i. e., brass. With such patrices only lead matrices could be made, but the latter could be produced in two ways. Molten lead could be poured over the patrices or the patrices could be pressed into cold lead. The first mode is somewhat complex, but the matrix would have a smooth surface and need no further adjustment.

The second mode is more simple, but required great force, although lead is a soft metal. Moreover the surface of the matrix would have to be trimmed, as the impression forces the metal downwards and sidewards, which makes the surface uneven, though by this pressure the lead becomes firmer and more compact, to the advantage of the type-founder.

Enschede thinks that Gutenberg obtained his matrices by the second mode. He arrives at this conclusion by reason of the fact that Gutenberg’s types were sharper in their impressions than Coster’s. Developing this theory, he believes that Gutenberg had each letter engraved on a brass plate 2 mm. thick, therefore a mere letter without anything underneath it. This brass letter patrix was pressed, by means of a small flat plate, so far into the lead that its back formed an unbroken plane with the top surface of the lead, and was then removed.

After the matrix had been made this way, the type were cast, which was done, not by pouring metal into the matrix, but by pressing the latter into semi-fused metal. In this way a great many letters could be cast from one matrix without any injury to it. Gutenberg’s method was to cast in two tempos, according to Enschede, that is, the character was cast first and the shank was cast by another operation joining it to the character.

Enschede warns us, however, that his theories are simply those of a practical founder and not a bibliographer’s. But since no tools used by those early printers and type-founders have come to light to prove or disprove him, his theory is as valuable as any others advanced as to the methods used for casting type in those primitive days of printing.

The shape of the type used as early as 1470 does not seem to differ materially from those of the present day. This is evident from old type which were discovered in 1878 in the bed of the river Saone, near Lyons, opposite the site of one of the fifteenth century printing-houses of that city.

Also a page in Joh. Neider’s “Lepra Moralis” printed by Conrad Homburch in Cologne in 1476 shows the accidental impression of a type pulled up from its place in the course of printing by the ink-ball, and laid at length on the face of the form, leaving its exact profile indented upon the page.

This accidental imprint shows a small circle, and it is presumed that the type were pierced latterly by a circular hole, which did not penetrate the whole thickness of the letter, and served, like the nick in modern type, to enable the compositor to tell by touch which way to set the letter in his stick.

The fact that a letter was pulled out of the form seems to show that the type composing the line could not have been threaded together, as set forth by Ottley in his theory of clay molds for casting type. It is to be remembered, however, that in the early days of printing, every printer was his own type-founder. The method of casting type had not been standardized and each printer had his own individual ideas both as to the kind of characters and the method used in casting them. Some may have threaded their type together in lines and others may have simply locked them up in the form face downward in the composing stone to overcome any irregularities caused by crude methods of casting.

Vinc. Fineschi, of Florence, in Italy, gives an extract from the cost-book of the Ripoli press, about 1480, which shows that steel, brass, copper, tin, lead and iron were all used in the manufacture of type at that period.

Today we have the wizardry of mechanical production in the manufacture of type. The linotype and monotype machines, uncanny in their operations, have also come into common practice. Without them printing would seem almost as primitive, in typography, as it was in its infancy.