But in these days there are so many kinds of printers (lithographic printers, steel- and copper-plate printers, linotype printers, textile printers, etc.) that to define the sort of printer who does his work with type the use of the adjective “typographic” is necessary.
The word “typography” is derived from the Greek typos, or type; and graphe, or writing—type-writing. Typography, then, as I shall use it, means printing from movable, or separate, types.
The origin of typography may be open to dispute, but it is an undeniable fact that the art of printing with separate types was practiced at Mainz, Germany, during the years 1450–1455, and from there spread over Europe.
Before that period books were written by hand or printed from crudely engraved blocks of wood.
The thousand years preceding the invention of printing (the fifth to the fifteenth century) are known in history as the Middle Ages, and the first six centuries of this period (the fifth to the eleventh) are called the Dark Ages, because during those years civilization in Europe relapsed into semi-barbarism, and scientific, artistic and literary pursuits were almost entirely abandoned.
Latin had been the language of intellectual Europe up to the time of the fall of Rome (476 A.D.) and one of the influences that led up to this benighted period was that Southern Europe was overrun by so-called barbarians from Germania in the north—the Angles and Saxons, who settled in Britain; the Franks, Burgundians and Goths, who settled in Gaul (now France) and Germany; the Vandals who settled in Spain, and the Lombards, who settled in Italy.
In Italy, Spain and Gaul the Latin-speaking natives far outnumbered the invaders, and the Germanic conquerors were forced to learn something of Latin. The present languages of those countries are the result of that attempt. The language of the Germanic Angles and Saxons was used in Britain after their invasion of that country, but was modified by the French-speaking Normans who conquered England in the eleventh century. Thus Latin as a common language died.
Altho dead to most of the population of Europe, Latin was made the official language of the Christian church, and, during that period of the Middle Ages when French, Spanish, Italian and English were in a state of evolution, it afforded a means of keeping alive in written books the knowledge the world had gained before the dark curtain of ignorance was rung down.