But though he had lost his tools, Gutenberg had not lost his courage.
And he had not lost all his friends. One of them had money, and
he bought Gutenberg a new set of tools and hired a workshop for
him. And now at last Gutenberg's hopes were fulfilled.
First of all it is thought that he made types of hard wood. Each
type was a little block with a single letter at one end. Such types
were a great deal better than block letters. The block letters
were fixed. They could not be taken out of the words of which they
were parts. The new types were movable so they could be set up to
print one page, then taken apart and set up again and again to
print any number of pages.
But type made of wood did not always print the letters clearly and
distinctly, so Gutenberg gave up wood types and tried metal types.
Soon a Latin Bible was printed. It was in two volumes, each of which
had three hundred pages, while each of the pages had forty-two
lines. The letters were sharp and clear. They had been printed from
movable types of metal.