Assyrian Clay Tablet
The Assyrians not only inscribed their records upon cylinders of soft clay by pressing a sharp stick into them to make the curious wedge-shaped characters of their alphabet, but it is evident that they carved rather long inscriptions on plates, probably of wood, and transferred these to bricks by pressure. The illustration shows an Assyrian stamped brick of this sort. Wherever we touch the history of civilized man we find some form of printing by the use of a seal, a stamp, or even a single letter. Some manuscripts long before the middle of the fifteenth century seem to have had the initial letters put in by means of stamps which were applied either by heavy hand pressure or by the blow of a mallet. These initial letters certainly show the use of color in making the impression. 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.
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. The Japanese were using blocks for printing before the year 800, A. D. The British Museum contains a Corean book apparently printed from movable types which is supposed to date as far back as 1338.
All this is very interesting, but there is not the slightest evidence that it had any effect whatever on the development of printing in Europe. Chinese and Japanese typography is not a development from their own block books, but is a recent importation from Europe. The Chinese characters, which are also used by the Japanese, are not letters but ideograms. Instead of having a few characters representing the fundamental sounds, by the combination of which words are expressed, they have a vast number of characters, many thousands of them. These characters represent to the mind an idea as a whole. They may be vocalized as a word or a syllable, but not as a single sound out of a combination of which syllables and words may be built up. It was quite practicable to carve the characters representing a page on a block and print from that, but it was clearly not practicable to make movable types representing all these almost innumerable characters. Typographic printing is possible only through the selection for common use of a small number of the most essential characters and using them as the basis of a working vocabulary. 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. It is about sixteen feet long by five feet high, and is made up of a number of smaller “cases” approximately twelve by fifteen inches over all, each holding about two hundred and forty characters. This font is approximately ten-point body according to United States standards. It required an entire month to “lay the cases.” It requires about ten thousand characters to print a Chinese book, but some of them are made by combinations of primary characters, so that the seven thousand in the case will do the work.
During the centuries previous to the invention of printing the number of persons who could read was very small. The common people, farmers, soldiers, workmen, and the like, received but little instruction outside the immediate necessities of their lives. That little was largely by word of mouth reinforced by symbol and picture or statue. In those days the churches were the poor man’s schools and libraries. The Bible stories were told him by the priests and nuns and by the old men and women. The churches were elaborately ornamented with statues, stained glass windows, brasses, paintings, and carvings. Many of these painted or sculptured representations were conventionalized. If one saw a figure with a great key in his hand, no matter what the costume of the figure or the design of the face, he knew it was St. Peter. If he saw another figure with a book and a sword, he knew that it was St. Paul, and so on. 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. Caricature began here as well as religious and historical instruction. 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.
By and by the desire came to bring this instruction into the homes of the people who were too poor to have paintings and carvings of their own. This desire was met by the production of what is known as image prints. The picture of some saint was carved on a piece of wood and from this block, or more properly plate, because the pictures were carved on the side and not the end of a flat piece of wood, an inked impression was made on parchment or paper. This process seems to have come in use some time in the fourteenth century. By the beginning of the fifteenth it was fairly common. The earliest dated woodcut of this sort, bearing the date 1423, is shown herewith. It is interesting not only as being the oldest dated work of this sort, but as being typical of the way in which these pictures were conceived and executed. It represents St. Christopher. The saint is shown fording the river with the Child Jesus on his shoulder and represents the entire legend of St. Christopher, the Christ Bearer.
