Before printing came to Europe, every book was copied by hand. A skilled scribe wrote a few pages a day. Books were rare and costly, and every copy could carry new mistakes. In China, printing from carved wooden blocks was centuries old, and movable type had been made there and in Korea. In Mainz, Germany, a goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg worked out a whole system for printing with metal type, and by about 1450 it was working.
Gutenberg's achievement was the system, every part fitted to the others: a way to cast thousands of identical metal letters quickly, an ink that would stick to metal, and a press to push paper evenly onto the type. His great Bible, printed in Latin with 42 lines to most pages, was finished by about 1454 or 1455. About 180 copies were printed, roughly three-quarters on paper and the rest on vellum (calfskin). 49 survive in whole or in large part.
Key idea
How the type was made
- Punch. A metal-worker carved each letter, backward, on the end of a steel bar.
- Matrix. The punch was struck into a small block of softer copper, leaving a letter-shaped dent, the right way round.
- Hand mould. The matrix fitted into the bottom of a two-part metal mould that could open and close in the hand. Pour in hot metal, open the mould, and out comes a sort with its letter raised and backward. The mould could be adjusted for wide and narrow letters, so one mould cast every letter.
- Type metal. Mostly lead, with tin and antimony added. It melts at a low temperature, fills the fine lines of the matrix, and hardens almost at once, so a caster could make many sorts an hour.
- Ink. Scribes' ink was watery and would bead up on metal. Printers used a sticky ink made with oil, more like a varnish with soot in it.
- The press. Screw presses had long been used to squeeze grapes for wine and olives for oil. Gutenberg's shop adapted one to press a flat wooden platen down onto paper and type.
Historians agree on the system but not on every detail of Gutenberg's own early methods. He left no description, and close study of the letters in his earliest books has led some researchers to think his first casting method may have differed from the classic hand mould described above. The steps above are how type was cast for centuries after him.
Upper case and lower case
Printers kept their sorts in a pair of shallow wooden trays with many compartments, set on a sloping stand. Capitals went in the upper tray, the upper case. Small letters, used far more often, went in the lower tray, closer to the hand: the lower case. The names stuck to the letters themselves. The common compartments were bigger, and the busiest letters sat nearest the compositor. Joseph Moxon described the cases and the whole craft in his Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing (London, 1683).
Let's think it through
Worked example: Read the metal
- The type is a mirror image of the page.
- So the letter order is reversed, and each letter faces backward.
Answer: S S E R P, every letter backward.
Worked example: A scribe's Bible
- $1288 \div 6 \approx 215$ working days.
- $1288 \div 4 = 322$ working days.
Answer: About 215 to 322 working days, most of a year or more, for a single copy.
Worked example: Pulling the Bible
- Impressions: $322 \times 2 = 644$.
- $644 \div 200 \approx 3.2$ hours.
Answer: About 3 hours of pulling per copy, once the type is set. Setting the type, about 290 different sorts and tens of thousands of letters, was the slow part.
Common mistake
| Scribe with a pen | Hand press and crew | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical output | about 2 to 3 leaves (4 to 6 pages) a day; from under 1 to about 10 leaves | about 200 to 250 sheet sides an hour (later records; early presses were probably slower) |
| In a 12-hour day | 4 to 6 pages | about 2,400 to 3,000 sheet sides, once the type is set |
| Copies | each one written again from the start, with new chances for mistakes | hundreds of identical copies from one setting |
Build it: a potato-stamp press
Making metal type means molten metal and lead, so we leave that out. You can feel every other step with a stamp of your own.
- A large potato, or a block of craft foam and some cardboard
- A washable ink pad or washable poster paint on a plate
- Paper, a pencil, a ruler, and a heavy book
- A grown-up with a small kitchen knife (for potato) or scissors (for foam)
- Pick a short word, three or four letters, and write it in pencil on paper.
- Hold the paper up to a window or a mirror and trace the word backward on the other side. That is how it must look on your stamp.
- A grown-up cuts the potato in half. Draw the backward letters on the cut face. The grown-up cuts away the potato around each letter, about 5 mm deep, so the letters stand up. (Foam: cut out backward letters and glue them on cardboard.)
- Ink the letters by dabbing, not wiping, like a printer's ink balls. Too little ink gives patchy letters; too much makes blots.
- Lay the stamp face up, set the paper on top, and press it evenly with the heavy book, like a press's platen. Lift the paper and read your word.
- Print ten copies. Time yourself. Then copy the same word by hand ten times, neatly. Compare.
What to look for
- Backward on the stamp, forward on the paper.
- Even pressure prints evenly. A slight dampening of the paper, as printers did, can help it take the ink.
- Once the stamp is made, each copy is quick. Making the stamp was the slow part, just as setting type was.
Iterate like Gutenberg
- Make separate letters instead of a whole word, so you can rearrange them into new words: that is movable type.
- Gutenberg needed every sort the same height so they all printed evenly. Try a stamp with one letter taller than the others. What happens?
- Justify a line: write a sentence on squared paper and spread the spaces so both edges line up. Count how many squares each space needs.
- A grown-up does the cutting and stripping of wire, and any work with a craft knife. Keep fingers behind the blade.
- Use washable ink or paint only.
- Do not melt metal or handle lead to make type: that is why we use potato or foam.