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HISTORY]
TYPOGRAPHY
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composed of separate pieces was known to the block-printer, but he would have found it impossible to use small insulated blocks of wood Enschedé Theory. for printing, or to manufacture them for that purpose with the necessary mathematical precision. Hence the idea of separate movable characters was not the invention of printing, but the art of casting them, and this was a work not for the block-printer, but for another industry, for a foundry.

From the types of B36 and B42 Enschedé concludes that Gutenberg's punches (patrices) were made, like the bookbinders' stamps, of yellow copper (brass, Germ. Messing). With such patrices only leaden matrices could be made, but the latter could be produced in two ways: the lead can be poured over the patrix, or the patrix be pressed into cold lead. The first mode is somewhat complex, but the matrix would have a smooth surface, and need no further adjustment. The second mode is more simple, but requires great force, although lead is a soft metal. Moreover, the surface of the matrix has to be trimmed, as the impression forces the lead downwards and sidewards, which makes the surface uneven, though by this pressure the lead becomes firmer and more compact, to the advantage of the type-founder. Enschedé thinks that Gutenberg's letters must have been sharp, and that he obtained his matrices by the second mode; he had each letter engraved on a brass plate, 2mm. thick, therefore a mere letter without anything underneath it. This letter (patrix) was pressed, by means of a small flat plate, so far into the metal that its back formed one surface with the top part of the lead, and then removed. After the patrix and matrix had been made in this way, the letter was to be cast, and Enschedé believes that for this work Gutenberg used what in Germany is called the Abklatsch-method, which, after having been gradually improved, was at last superseded by more perfect machinery. By this method the letter was cast in two tempos. First the letter itself on a small plate; then the plate placed underneath a casting form, to fix it to a small shank, which was to be cast into the form and would make, with the plate, the exact height of the letter. The letter on the plate was made not by pouring the metal into the matrix, but by beating the latter into the molten metal. When lead is heated so as to be a soft mass it easily assumes the form of any object which falls on or in it, therefore also of the matrix, which is the image of the engraved type. When the metal is not overheated it will immediately cool down by contact with the cold matrix, so that the latter will not be injured, although it consists of the same substance as the molten metal. In this way a great many letters can be cast from one matrix. Enschedé describes various difficulties connected with this method, and tells us that only large letters, like those of B36 and B42, could be made by it, as the operation of adding the shank to the letter becomes impossible in the case of smaller letters. Hence Gutenberg, having conceived the idea of printing from seeing (1) the Dutch Donatuses, chose this large size of type for his work; for the smaller types of the 1454 Indulences a copper matrix was required, which, in its turn, necessitated the use of a steel patrix, the introduction of which he ascribes, as others have done before him (e.g. Bergellanus), to Peter Schoeffer.

As to the Costerian types, their bad and irregular condition shows, he thinks, that they were produced from leaden matrices, and the latter from brass patrices, though wooden patrices are also possible, but not probable. All the tools, however, were imperfect, and the workmen inexperienced, and therefore bound to produce such imperfections as he finds in the Abecedarium and, Donatus types. But the types were cast in one tempo; the Abklatsch-method would have been out of the question for them on account of their small size. In this way Enschedé thinks Coster, not having learnt his art from anybody, invented the type cast with the staff, in one tempo, while Gutenberg, having had a Costerian Donatus as his model, cast his large types in two tempos by the Abklatsch system till Peter Schoeffer, by means of his steel patrices, was able to cast smaller types such as those of the 1454 Indulgences, with staff and all.

Enschedé warns us that he is merely making suggestions as a type-founder, that he is not a bibliographer, and leaves the interpretation of documents to others. We quote his theories as coming from such a qualified type-founder, and because they have made some impression in certain quarters, but they lead us away from the real points connected with the invention of printing. First of all the “casting of metal types” is not, as he thinks, the first stage in the invention; its beginning, its essence is, and has always been thought to be, the movability of the characters. This movability, and the accidental way in which it was discovered, form together the pith of the Haarlem tradition as told by Junius. He indicates it, without using the word “movable,” by saying that Coster, while walking in the Haarlem wood, cut some letters in the bark of a tree, and with them, “reversely impressed one by one on paper,” composed one or two lines. Nothing seems more natural than that a block-printer (as the printer of the xylographically printed Speculum must have been) should cut such separate letters, and thereupon perceive that the could be used over and over again for a variety of words, on different pages, while those which he used to cut in a block only served him for one page and for one purpose. It is equally clear from the Haarlem tradition that the art of casting metal types was the second stage in the invention, a development or outcome of the primary idea of “movable letters,” and the realization of their advantage, for lunius says that Coster “afterwards changed the beechen characters into leaden, and the latter again into tin ones.” This also shows that the discoverer of the insulated movable wooden letters—after realizing, perhaps, that they could not endure much pressure, or missed (as Enschedé says) the mathematical precision necessary for his purpose—transformed himself from a woodcutter into a letter-founder, and had no recourse (as Enschedé would have it) for casting his types to a foundry apart from his own. As this transformation is possible and probable there seems to be no reason for departing from the simple but clear Haarlem tradition as we read it in Junius.

In the infancy of printing every printer, in different countries and different towns, starts with his own types; hence we may conclude that he had learnt the art of engraving and casting them himself, and so combined the art of type-founding with that of printing. This points back to a combination of the two or three arts in the first printing-office. It would be strange if the inventor of the movable letters, whom we have shown to have been a block printer, and therefore acquainted with the art of engraving letters, and other mechanical contrivances connected with printing, had lacked the ability, which his immediate followers possessed, of imparting to his movable characters, by some means or another, that firmness and precision which he required for the realization of his invention. How long Coster had been a block-printer before he invented, and how long and to what extent he continued to use, the movable wooden letters, we cannot tell.

That Enschedé ascribes to Coster the invention of casting metal types with a shank (as they have been manufactured for centuries afterwards), and that of another mode of manufacturing types (the Abklatsch-method) to Gutenberg, suggested to the latter by seeing (!) the Donotuses printed at Haarlem, looks like an amiable attempt to get over the unpleasant tradition of the theft of Coster's types, but his theories are irreconcilable with the Haarlem tradition, with Zell's account of the relation between Dutch and Mainz printing and with bibliography in general.

It is not surprising that Enschedé's theories called forth others from Zedler (Veröffentl. i. 34), who argues as follows: Enschedé says rightly that the type of the Hague Dutch Donatus is more defective than that of any other 15th-century book, more than even that of the Paris Donatus. Such types could not have been cast from a copper matrix. But a printer who had derived his art of casting types from Gutenberg or one of his pupils, would hardly, after the introduction of the steel stamp and the copper matrix (necessary for manufacturing the small types of the 1454 Indulgences), have returned to the casting of a small type from a leaden matrix, and used, moreover, a process which remained, in its consequences, behind that of Gutenberg. Zedler then points to a peculiarity of the earliest Dutch incunabula already mentioned above, namely, the sign of contraction connected with some letters by a fine stroke, which he says is not (!) found in the Dutch blockbooks, or in the Dutch MSS. He thinks, therefore, that this stroke was required by the method of casting this type. The stamp for making the matrix cannot have been a staff, on the lower end of which the reversed letter was cut, but a mere letter without any footing. Consequently, it must have consisted of lead not wood, and have been manufactured in the same way as Gutenberg's type was made, according to Enschedé. Every sign of contraction had to be one whole with the letters to which they belonged to prevent their being shifted during the process of printing. The letters cast from the matrix made in this way had as foot a thin square plate which enclosed the letter but no staff, owing to the mode of making the stamp and the matrix. If the Dutch printer had intended to cast a type with a staff by means of a casting tool, however primitive, he would not have required the thin plate. But his letters, with a thin plate as their foot, required to be pasted on a sheet of strong paper, so as to be firmly connected in words and sentences for the purpose of printing. Hence the printer could regulate the spaces between the words, without using, like Gutenberg, spaces of a definite width for this purpose, so that he had no trouble in making the lines end evenly. From such a printing-surface with a firm footing, it was possible, after the ground had become hard, to obtain impressions just as from movable types enclosed in the forme. Zedler was told by an expert that, technically, there was nothing against such an explanation, but, he says, if it were correct, it would not solve the question, not yet satisfactorily answered, as to what we have to understand by the printed Dutch Donatuses. The “doctrinal jetté en molle” of Jean le Robert and the libri impressi, mentioned under the year 1450 in the Memorial of the monastery Weidenbach in Cologne would then be books printed from such printing plates with separately cast letters. In this way Zells' account in the Cologne Chronicle would be confirmed (!). We should also understand why the Dutch, though knowing the art of casting types, only printed Donatuses and similar small schoolbooks, for which there was much demand, for in the present day, stereotype-printing is likewise used for books which, when editions follow each other rapidly, have to be printed unaltered. In this case Gutenberg would not be the inventor of the cast letter. But the Dutch could not claim, with Enschedé, the honour of the invention of movable metal types. They invented the casting of letters, but it would be Gutenberg's merit to have invented the movable cast types. At any rate he would be the inventor of the