The Invention of Typography / A Brief Sketch of the Invention of Printing and How it Came About

by Frederick W. Hamilton

Now it happens that with regard to the invention of printing we have evidence of all three classes. All of it is conflicting, but the conflicts, it is to be noted, are mainly in the evidence of the third class. The evidence of the second class exists mainly in Mainz, but is not nearly as conclusive as has been supposed. Evidence of the first class comes entirely from Haarlem, and is there supported by one or two important pieces of evidence of the second class. With this brief introduction perhaps it will be easier to understand the argument which follows.

Of course, the material of the first class, namely, remains, would be the earliest known pieces of printing. If these pieces of printing were dated as books are today, they could not be questioned, but as they are not so dated, but must be placed by other evidence, they have been questioned. There exist, in whole or in part, forty-seven distinct pieces of printing each bearing evidence of being among the first pieces of printing produced. These forty-seven works in their present condition run all the way from an entire book to a fragment of a single page. A group of three or four of them may be identified by reference to officials whose official dates were known as being either in 1474 or immediately preceding it. This, however, does not date the whole group. These few specimens are much more advanced in their appearance and workmanship than the rest of the forty-seven. Several other editions of some at least of these better books appear in this interesting lot of remains. The other editions are of a much more primitive appearance, showing that the period covered by the forty-seven works ended not later than 1474.

Of these forty-seven works, forty-five are in Latin, which, as we know, was the language of schools, courts, and churches at this period in all nations. 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. All the rest of the forty-seven are closely related to these, as is shown by the similarity but not identity of their types.

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 deceive, 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. An attempt was made at one time to assign these books to Utrecht, but it is not only true that each country had its prevailing copyist’s hand, but that each important center had its own system variously developed in the local schools in which copying was taught. The Utrecht hand is not the Haarlem hand. The books resemble the Haarlem hand and not the Utrecht.

While the forty-seven books show a considerable number of varieties of type, the editions being identified by these type differences, all the type faces show a strong family resemblance. They are designed from a common model, but not at the same time, and consequently they show marked resemblances and marked differences. The question may be asked why the same printer should use eight or nine different fonts of type for only forty-seven books. The answer is found in the fact that type-making was as yet in an experimental stage and that durable material had not yet been found for that purpose. When we come to the discussion of evidence of another class we shall find confirmation of this. There is no evidence of the second or third class connecting early printing with any Dutch town except Haarlem. There is, however, important evidence of the other classes which does connect printing with Haarlem. There are not, however, forty-seven different works. Twenty of the forty-seven books are different editions of the Donatus, that is to say they are Donatuses showing such typographic differences as to show that no two of them could have been printed from the same type form. Four of them are editions of the Speculum and eight are different editions of the Doctrinale. The Doctrinale was a brief compend to Christian doctrine approved by the church and widely circulated among the faithful.

Nearly all of the fragments of these forty-seven books have been found in Haarlem or in the neighborhood. It is evident that the publications of this press, whatever its date, were locally sold and that neither its fame nor its product went far from the place of production.

Having thus shown the reasons for believing that these forty-seven pieces of early printing came from Haarlem, let us see what they have to say for themselves as to the time of their production. It has already been pointed out that a small group of the best of them dated themselves no later than 1474, as is shown by their contents. So far as the contents themselves are concerned we have nothing to date the others. There are certain things about the books themselves, however, which show that their production must have begun long before 1474.

For one thing, there are twenty editions of the Donatus. We have no way of knowing how near together the editions were, but when we compare them with the editions of the Donatus later published we shall see that it is not unreasonable to suppose that they run back some thirty years. There were also four editions of the Speculum and eight editions of the Doctrinale. In each case the evidence of other printers shows that even one of the small editions usually published at that time lasted for a considerable period. The appearance of the books themselves bears out this conclusion. Good as the later ones are, they are inferior to Mainz workmanship of their period and the earlier ones are far inferior to Mainz workmanship of any period. They are not only without signatures, initial directors, hyphens, and catch words, all of which had come into use before 1474, but they show certain other remarkable peculiarities.

Many of these editions were printed on vellum, which is not in itself remarkable, as vellum continued to be used for a good many years for some books and for special copies of certain editions. Some of them show a further peculiarity of having vellum and paper combined together, some of the pages being printed on sheets of vellum and some being printed on sheets of paper. A considerable number of these books are printed only on one side of the page. None of the early Mainz books show this peculiarity. Some of these books not only show the curious combination of paper and vellum just noted, but curious combinations of the use of block and type. In some cases the upper part of the page shows a picture printed from a block while the lower part is printed from type.

The blocks thus used are the old familiar blocks of the Speculum but with no text carved on the block. Some of the books show the peculiarity of certain pages of text printed from blocks and other pages of text printed from type.