Experiments have proved conclusively that the face of a wood-cut type may be without injury impressed into lead in a state of semi-fusion, and thus produce in creux an inverted image of itself in the matrix. It has also been shown that a lead matrix so formed is capable, after being squared and justified, {15} of being adapted to a mould, and producing a certain number of types in soft lead or pewter before yielding to the heat of the operation.[30] It has also been demonstrated that similar matrices formed in clay or plaster, by the application of the wood or metal models[31] while the substance is moist, are capable of similar use.
Dr. Franklin, in a well-known passage of his Autobiography, gives the following account of his experiences as a casual letter-founder in 1727. “Our press,” he says, “was frequently in want of the necessary quantity of letter; and there was no such trade as that of letter-founder in America. I had seen the practice of this art at the house of James, in London; but had at the time paid it very little attention. I, however, contrived to fabricate a mould. I made use of such letters as we had for punches, founded new letters of lead in matrices of clay, and thus supplied in a tolerable manner the wants that were most pressing.”[32] M. Bernard states that in his day the Chinese characters in the Imperial printing-office in Paris were cast by a somewhat similar process. The original wooden letters were moulded in plaster. Into the plaster mould types of a hard metal were cast, and these hard-metal types served as punches to strike matrices with in a softer metal.[33]
In the Enschedé foundry at Haarlem there exists to this day a set of matrices said to be nearly four hundred years old, which are described as leaden matrices from punches of copper, “suivant l’habitude des anciens fondeurs dans les premiers temps après l’invention de l’imprimerie.”[34] By {16} the kindness of Messrs. Enschedé, we are able to show a few letters from types cast in these venerable matrices.
1. Types cast from leaden matrices (circ. 1500?) now in the Enschedé foundry, Haarlem.
Lead matrices are frequently mentioned as having been in regular use in some of the early foundries of this country. A set of them in four-line pica was sold at the breaking up of James’s foundry in 1782, and in the oldest of the existing foundries to this day may be found relics of the same practice.
At Lubeck, Smith informs us in 1755,[35] a printer cast for his own use, “not only large-sized letters for titles, but also a sufficient quantity of two-lined English, after a peculiar manner, by cutting his punches on wood, and sinking them afterwards into leaden matrices; yet were the letters cast in them deeper than the French generally are.”
When, therefore, the printer of the Catholicon, in 1460, says of his book, “non calami styli aut pennæ suffragio, sed mirâ patronarum formarumque concordiâ proportione ac modulo impressus atque confectus est,” we have not necessarily to conclude that the types were produced in the modern way from copper matrices struck by steel punches. Indeed, probability seems to point to a gradual progress in the durability of the materials employed. In the first instance, the punches may have been of wood, and the matrices soft lead or clay[36]; then the attempt might be made to strike hard lead into soft; that failing, copper punches[37] might be used to form leaden matrices; then, when the necessity for a more durable substance than lead for the letter became urgent, copper would be used for the matrix, and brass, and finally steel, for the punch.
Of whatever substance the matrices were made, the first printers appear early to have mastered the art of justifying them, so that when cast in the mould they should not only stand, each letter true in itself, but all true to one another. Nothing amazes one more in examining these earliest printed works than the wonderful regularity of the type in body, height, and line; and if anything could be considered as evidence that those types were produced from matrices in {17} moulds, and not by the rude method of casting from matrices which comprehended body and face in the same moulding, this feature alone is conclusive. We may go further, and assert that not only must the matrices have been harmoniously justified, but the mould employed, whatever its form, must have had its adjustable parts finished with a near approach to mathematical accuracy, which left little to be accomplished in the way of further improvement.
Respecting this mould we have scarcely more material for conjecture than with regard to the first punches and matrices. The principle of the bipartite mould was, of course, well known already. The importance of absolute squareness in the body and height of the type would demand an appliance of greater precision than the uncertain hollowed cube of sand or clay; the heat of the molten lead would point to the use of a hard metal like iron or steel; and the varying widths of the sunk letters in the matrices would suggest the adoption of some system of slides whereby the mould could be expanded or contracted laterally, without prejudice to the invariable regularity of its body and height. By what crude methods the first typefounder contrived to combine these essential qualities, we have no means of judging[38]; but were they ever so crude, to him is due the honour of the culminating achievement of the invention of typography. “His type mould,” Mr. De Vinne remarks, “was not merely the first; it is the only practical mechanism for making types. For more than four hundred years this mould has been under critical examination, and many {18} attempts have been made to supplant it. . . . But in principle, and in all the more important features, the modern mould may be regarded as the mould of Gutenberg.”