found difficulties in making or buying matrices tried to evade its
necessary conditions and cheapen its processes. The types of wood
with holes for wire, described by Specklin and others, must have been
punches of wood which had been made in the belief that it would be
cheaper to cast words than to cast and compose single letters. The
matrices of lead noticed by Enschedé were probably made by striking
the punch of wood in half-melted metal, after the process described
by Didot. The punch of wood, burned by contact with hot metal, was
repaired, altered and renewed; the matrix of lead,[375] clogged by the
adhesion of metal, became defaced, and was soon worn out. Every change
in punch or matrix produced a corresponding change in the cast type.
[p518]
The types of the fifteenth century were made without system. The
dimensions of each body and the peculiarities of each face were
determined chiefly by the manuscript copy which had been selected as
the model. No printer had any idea of the advantages to be derived
from a series of regularly graduated sizes, nor of the beauty of a
series of uniform faces, nor of the great evils they would impose on
themselves and their successors by the use of irregular bodies.[376] A
classification by scale of the types of any printer of this period will
show that there are often wide gaps between the larger, and confusing
proximities between the smaller, bodies.[377]
As the size of every body is determined by the mould in which it is
cast, it would seem that there must have been a separate mould for
every distinct body.[378] But this inference is encumbered with fatal
objections. The type-mould of hard metal is, and always has been, a
very expensive tool, and it cannot be supposed that any early printer
made two or four moulds for one body when one mould would have served.
It [p519] is much more probable that he tried to make one mould
serve for two or more bodies. The inventor of the mould may have
thought that it should be constructed with adjustments, so that it
should cast different bodies as well as different widths of types. The
practicability of a mould of this description is properly demonstrated
by the old-fashioned adjustable mould for irregular bodies, or by the
mould used for casting leads, which can be so enlarged or diminished
that it will cast many bodies or thicknesses. If we suppose that this
mould was used by Gutenberg for casting the two bodies of the _Letters
of Indulgence_, and by the unknown printer of the Netherlands for
his four bodies of English, and that it was, of necessity, newly set
or adjusted each time a new font was cast, we shall at once have a
precise explanation of irregularities which are unaccountable under
any other hypothesis. Casting types without the system, standards
and gauges which modern type-founders use, it is not surprising that
the first printers made types with differences of body. It was the
impracticability of casting in this primitive mould, at different
times, types of uniform body, that compelled later type-founders to
discard it, and to use instead a mould for each body.
[Illustration: A Type of the Fifteenth Century.[379]
[From Madden.]]
The casting of the types, which was always done in the printing office,
was then adjudged a proper part of a printer’s trade. The earlier
chroniclers said the first types were made of lead and tin. The Cost
Book of the Ripoli Press specifies these metals, and obscurely mentions
another which seems to have been one of the constituents of type-metal.
If this conjecture can be accepted, types were probably made in the
fifteenth century, as they are now, of lead, tin and antimony.[380]
Not one of the millions of types founded during the fifteenth [p520]
century has been preserved, nor is there in any old book an engraving
or a description of a type. This neglected information has been
unwittingly furnished by a careless pressman in the office of Conrad
Winters, who printed at Cologne in 1476. This pressman, or his mate,
when inking a slackly justified form, permitted the inking ball to
pull out a thin-bodied type, which dropped sideways on the face of the
form. The accident was not noticed; the tympan closed upon the form,
and the bed was drawn under the platen. Down came the screw and platen,
jamming the unfortunate type in the form, and embossing it strongly in
the fibres of the thick wet paper, in a manner which reveals to us the
shape of Winters’ types more truthfully than it could have been done
even by special engraving. The height[381] of this type is a trifle
less than one American inch. The sloping shoulder, or the beard, as
it was once called, was made to prevent the blackening of the paper,
for it would have been blackened if the shoulder had been high and
square.[382] The circular mark, about [p521] one-tenth of an inch
diameter, on the side of the type, was firmly depressed in the metal,
but did not perforate it. As this type had no nick on the body, it is
apparent that the circular mark was cast there to guide the compositor.
When the type was put in the stick with the mark facing outward, the
compositor knew, without looking at the face, that it was rightly
placed. There is no groove at the foot. Duverger says that the early
types had no jet or breaking-piece; that the superfluous metal was cut
off, and the type made of proper height by sawing.[383] These details
may seem trifling, but they are of importance: they show that, in
the more important features, the types of the early printers closely
resembled ours.
There is a disagreement among bibliographers about the quantity of
types ordinarily cast for a font by the early printers. Some, judging
from appearances which show that one page only was printed at an
impression, say that they cast types for two or three pages only;
others maintain that they must have had very large fonts. That the
latter view is correct seems fully established after a survey of the
books known to have been printed by Zell, Koburger, Leeu, and others.
It would have been impossible to print these books in the short period
in which we know they were done, if the printer had not been provided
with abundance of types.[384] As the types were made in the printing
office, by a quick method, from an alloy which could be used repeatedly
for the same purpose, the supply was rarely limited by fear of expense.
The trades of compositor and pressman, and possibly that of
type-caster, were kept about as distinct then as they are now. There
were more compositors than pressmen, and the [p522] compositors,
says Madden, in the heroic age of printing, were not boys, but men
of education and intelligence. The early printers who were taught
the business that they might become masters had to pay a premium for
their education.[385] In the brief time that they gave to the work,
their education must have been more theoretical than practical. As the
branch of composition required the largest number of workmen, and more
intelligence, and less manual labor than any other, it was usually
selected by the pupil for practice. Of type-casting and presswork he
learned no more than was sufficient to enable him to direct the labors
of his future workmen. The knowledge of the trade which the pupil
coveted was the ability to practise it on his own account, and this
knowledge was, in most instances, satisfactorily acquired when he got a
theoretical knowledge of its secret processes.
The frequent specification of the _formen_ in the earliest notices of
printing shows that the mould, with its accompanying matrices, was
regarded as the key to the knowledge and practice of the art. As the
moulds were made by master mechanics, not bound to secrecy, and as the
earlier compositors had some knowledge of the process of type-casting,
it was not difficult for a journeyman to become a master printer. When
he had bought a type-mould and matrices, he could go to any city and
begin to print books. He could cast types and mix ink as he needed
them; he could buy paper and the constituents of type-metal in any
large town; properly instructed, any joiner could make the press.[386]
[Illustration: Presswork and Composition as done in 1564.
[From Jost Amman.]]
The annexed illustration, a fac-simile of one of Amman’s engravings of
a printing office, is from his book dated 1564. [p523] The case for the
type is of one piece and is resting on a rude frame. All the boxes are
represented as of the same size, but this is probably an error, for it
is an error which is frequently made by designers of this day.[387]
In this, and in many other early illustrations of type-setting, the
compositors are seated on stools. In Italy and in Paris, women were
employed as compositors. In the wood-cut used by Jodocus Badius[388]
for a trade-mark, we see a hard-featured dame before a narrow case,
composing types with judicial deliberation. She has in her left hand a
narrow composing stick, made to hold but two or three lines of small
types. The early stick was not like the neatly finished iron tool of
our time, with steel composing rule and an adjustable screw and knee
adapting it to any measure. It was a real stick of wood, a home-made
strip of deal, with the side and end-piece tacked on. For every measure
a new stick or a retacking of the movable piece was required. The date
of the introduction of the stick cannot be fixed, but it was used,
without alteration for many years, by the printers of all countries.
It is possible that some of the early printers [p524] had no sticks.
The peculiar workmanship of the unknown printer and of Albert Pfister
shows that the types were taken direct from the case and wedged in the
mortised blocks of wood which served for chases. Blades attributes the
uneven spacing and irregular endings of lines in the early printed
books of Caxton and of other printers, to their ignorance of the
advantages of a composing rule, without which types could not be
readily moved to and fro, and adjusted.[389]
In the following illustration, the compositor has the copy before her
in the shape of a book, but Conrad Zeltner, a learned printer of the
seventeenth century, said that this was not the early usage; that it
was customary to employ a reader to read aloud to the compositors, who
set the types from dictation, not seeing the copy. He also says that
the reader could dictate from as many different pages or copies to
three or four compositors working together.[390] When the compositors
were educated, the method of dictation may have been practised with
some success; when they were ignorant, it was sure to produce many
errors. Zeltner said that he preferred the old method, but he admits
that it had to be abandoned, on account of the increasing ignorance of
the compositors. [p525]
No feature of early printing is more unworkmanlike than that of
composition. Imitating the style of the manuscript copy, the compositor
huddled together words and paragraphs in solid columns of dismal
blackness, and sent his forms to press without title, running-titles,
chapter-heads and paging-figures. The space for the ornamental borders
and letters of the illuminator seems extravagant when contrasted with
the pinched spaces between lines and words. The printer trusted to
the bright colors of the illuminator to give relief to the blackness
of the types, not knowing that a purer relief and greater perspicuity
would have been secured by a wider spacing of the words and lines.
The obscurity produced by huddled and over-black types was increased
by the neglect of simple orthographical rules. Proper names were
printed with or without capitals, apparently to suit the whim of the
compositor. The comma, colon and period, the only points of punctuation
in general use, were employed capriciously and illogically. Crooked
and unevenly spaced lines and errors of arrangement or making-up were
common. Madden has pointed out several gross blunders, caused by the
transposition of lines and pages and an erroneous calculation of the
space that should be occupied by print. Words were mangled in division,
and in the display of lines in capital letters, in a manner that seems
inexcusable. But no usage of the early compositor is more annoying than
his lawless use of abbreviations. Imitating the example of Procrustes,
he made the words fit, chopping them off on any letter or in any
position, indifferent to the wants of the reader or to the proprieties
of language.[391] Whatever opinion may be entertained concerning [p526]
the deterioration of printing in other branches, it is, beyond all
cavil, certain that in the art of arranging types so that the meaning
of the author shall be made lucid, the modern compositor is much the
more intelligent mechanic.
Improvements were made slowly. The method of spacing out lines so
as to produce a regular outline at the right side of every page had
been practised before, but it was not in general use even as late as
1478. Arabic figures, instead of Roman numerals, were first used by
Ter Hoorne of Cologne, and by Helye of Munster in 1470. Signatures to
guide the binder in putting together in order the different sheets of
a book were first used in printed books by Zarot of Milan in 1470. As
the alphabetical letters of these signatures often had to be doubled,
and sometimes quadrupled in thick books, it became necessary to print a
full list of the signatures at the end of every book as an additional
guide to the binder. This list, _registrum chartarum_, seems to have
been first used by Colonna at Venice in 1475. The clumsiness of doubled
alphabetical letters should have led to the use of Arabic figures
for signatures, and should have suggested paging, but these reforms
were not adopted for many years afterward.[392] A table of errata,
two pages folio, was exhibited by Gabriel Peter of Venice in 1478.
The first full title, if a few lines in compact capital letters can
be so called, was made by Ratdolt of Venice in 1477, but his example
was not rapidly followed by rival printers. Running-titles and open
chapter-headings are innovations of the next century. The printers of
the fifteenth century who wished to free themselves from dependence on
the illuminator filled up the white spaces about chapter-headings with
bits of engraving on wood or metal. [p527]
Galleys, or trays of wood to keep in place the composed types, were
not known; the types were placed line after line, perhaps letter by
letter, in the mortised block of wood which served for the chase. Nice
justification was impossible. If two pages were put in one mortise, one
of these pages would often be out of square—an irregularity which has
led some bibliographers to think that each page was separately printed
from a separate form. The locking-up or tightening of the types, which
was roughly done, often made the types crooked, springing them off
their feet and making the spaces work up.[393]
The neglect of the early printers to praise their presses is remarkable
when contrasted with their frequent praises of the marvelous art
of type-making. It is inferential evidence that the press was then
regarded as an old contrivance, and not worthy of notice, but this
conclusion cannot be unreservedly accepted. The principle of pressure
was old, and for that reason, was undervalued by printers, but the
mechanism of the press was new. That the printing press was an
invention of merit will be perceived at a glance when it is compared
with the screw press which is supposed to have served as the basis of
construction.[394] That a proper method of doing presswork was devised
in the infancy of the art may be inferred, not only from the permanency
of the primitive form of press, all the important features of which
are still preserved in the modern hand-press, but from the meritorious
presswork of the first books. The _Bibles_ of Gutenberg were certainly
printed on a press which quickly gave and quickly released its
pressure, and which had the attachments of a movable bed, tympan and
frisket, and contrivances for neatly inking the types and for keeping
the paper in position.
[Illustration: Presswork and Composition as done in 1520.
[From Blades’ fac-simile of the print of Badius.]
Two upright beams, or cheeks, supporting a thick cross-piece, or cap,
made the frame-work. The cap held in place the screw and spindle which
gave the impression, and the descent of the spindle was steadied by the
large square collar, or till, which was supported by the cheeks. The
point of the spindle pressed against the impressing surface, or platen,
which was held in place by iron rods connecting it with the collar.
The bed of the press and the form of types are concealed by the tympan
drawer, which, with tympan and frisket, have been folded down and run
under the platen. See illustration on page 307, and explanation on page
280, for the uses of these parts. The bed was of stone, but every other
large piece was of wood. Iron was used only for the spindle, the core
of the bar-handle, for nuts and bolts, and the minor pieces for which
no other material would serve.]
Jodocus Badius of Paris was the first printer who published engravings
of the printing press. It cannot be asserted [p528] that they are
minutely accurate representations of the press then in use, but they
will serve to show its general construction. Two features provoke
hostile comment. Contrary to modern usage, the piles of white paper and
printed paper are unhandily placed on the off-side of the press, and
the stalwart pressman pulls home the bar with both arms. The platen
[p529] seems altogether too small when contrasted with the great
screw, the heavy frame, and the two-handed pull of the pressman. The
smallness of this platen was not an error of the designer. Moxon, who
has minutely described the press of his time, says that the platen of
an ordinary press should be of the size 9 by 14 inches, and that the
coffin, or trough in which the bed was placed, should be 28 inches long
and 22 inches wide. In other words, the platen was purposely made so
that it could impress less than half the surface of the bed; it could
print only one-half of one side of the sheet.[395] Small as this platen
may seem, it was large enough for the frame-work of wood. It gave great
resistance under pull, and severely taxed the strength of the pressman.
A platen of double size would have defied the pressman; it would have
sprung under pressure and have broken the bed of stone.
The types were inked by balls, an appliance which is not more than
fifty years out of fashion. These balls were made of untanned
sheepskin, stuffed hard with wool, and mounted with handles. The gluey
ink was evenly distributed by forcibly rocking their curved surfaces
against each other. This done, the balls were then beaten upon the
types in the form.
When we learn that the early presses were made almost entirely of wood,
and put together by ordinary joiners, we may infer that many were
unscientifically built,[396] and shackly. [p530] All the materials
for presswork were imperfect. The types, cut to length by a saw, were
of uneven height; the paper was usually of very rough surface and of
irregular thickness; the platen of wood, rarely ever truly flat, must
have given unequal pressure at different corners. It was necessary that
some substance should be put between the platen and the white sheet
which would compensate for these irregularities. This substance was a
woolen blanket, in two or more thicknesses, which spread or diffused
the impression. The wetting of the paper, which made it soft and
pliable, materially aided the pressman, but his great reliance seems to
have been on strong impression. All the old cuts of presses represent
the pressman tugging at the bar with a force which seems out of all
proportion to the size of the form.
[Illustration: Early Inking Balls.
[From a Playing Card of Sixteenth Century.]]
The early press was rude, and the method of printing was unscientific,
but in many offices the pressman was superior to his press and his
method. By doing his work slowly and carefully he often did it
admirably. It was always done slowly, with a waste of time which,
if allowed in the modern practice of printing, would make books
of excessive price. Some notion of this waste may be had after an
examination of the letters of the _Psalter of 1457_, in which exact
work was produced by painting, not by printing proper. That the
performance of the press even on ordinary black work was slow, is
indicated by the great number of presses used by the early printers,
and is proved by the plain statement of Philip de Lignamine, [p531]
who said that the printers of Mentz printed three hundred sheets a
day. This seems a small performance.[397]
The accurate register of the first books was produced by placing the
white sheet on four fixed points which perforated the four corners of
the leaf when the first side was printed. In printing the back of the
page, the half-printed sheet was hung on the same points, from the same
point-holes, and was impressed in the same position. Blades notices the
four point-holes in some of Caxton’s books, and it is probable that the
mysterious pin-holes in other books are the marks of points. It was
soon discovered that register could be had with two points, which were
placed in the centre of the sheet where the marks would be hidden by
the binder.[398] [p532]
The printing ink of the fifteenth century, as we now see it, is
of unequal merit. In the books of Jenson it appears as an intense,
velvety, glossy black; in the _Bibles_ of Gutenberg it is a strong,
permanent black, without gloss; in the _Psalter of 1457_ it appears in
some places as a glossy black, and in others as a faded color which
had to be retouched with the pen; in the works of the unknown printer
it is a dingy and smearing black; in the book of some printers it is a
paste color which can be rubbed off with a sponge; in nearly all, it is
uneven, over-black on one page and gray on another.[399]
The general impression that early printing ink is blacker and brighter
than modern ink is not always correct. Early ink seems blacker, because
it is shown in greater quantity, for the early types were larger, of
broader face, without hair lines, and could be over-colored without
disadvantage.[400] The same ink applied to the small thin Roman
types of our time, [p533] would seem dull and gray. The microscopic
examination of any early ink will show that the black is not fine and
not thoroughly mixed with proper drying oil. But this imperfection is
comparatively unimportant. It is a graver fault in some early inks that
they are not firmly fixed to the paper.[401]
There is no trustworthy account of the invention of printing ink, but
the types and the inks were undoubtedly invented together. One was
the proper complement of the other. It may be supposed that Gutenberg
acquired the knowledge of the newly found properties of boiled
linseed oil[402] from German painters. It is certain that he used
oil as the basis of his ink, and that it was also used by his pupils
and successors. And it has been in use ever since, for there is no
substitute.
INGREDIENTS OF PRINTING INK
USED BY THE RIPOLI PRESS.
_Ingredients._ _Tuscan _American
Currency._ Currency._
Linseed Oil, bbl. lir. 3 10 0 $3.17
Turpentine, lb. 4 0 .18
Pitch, Greek 4 0 .18
Pitch, Black 1 8 7-1/2
Marcassite 3 0 .13-1/2
Vermilion 5 0 .22-3/4
Rosin 3 0 .13-1/2
Varnish, hard 8 0 .36
Varnish, liquid 12 0 .54
Nutgalls 4 0 .18
Vitriol 4 0 .18
Shellac 3 0 .13-1/2
We have not been told how the ink was compounded. Our nearest approach
to this knowledge is through the Cost Book of the Ripoli Press for
1481, which specifies and prices the materials. As no [p534] mention
is made of smoke-black, we have to infer that pitch was burnt to make
this black. Linseed oil, as the most bulky ingredient, very properly
occupies the first place. The real value of nutgalls and vitriol is not
so apparent: they were important ingredients in writing ink, and the
Italian printer may have thought them indispensable in printing ink.
Shellac and liquid varnish were used to give a glossy surface.