Movable type

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A case of cast metal type pieces and typeset matter in a composing stick

Movable type is the system of printing and typography using movable pieces of metal type, made by casting from matrices struck by letterpunches.

Around 1040, the first known movable type system was created in China by Bi Sheng out of baked clay. Movable type was not widely used in China, one reason being the enormous Chinese character set. Movable type with metal characters was used in Korea by the 13th century, and with the invention of the simplified Hangul alphabet in the 15th century, the Koreans had a greater advantage than the Chinese in using movable type.

Around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg introduced in what is regarded as an independent invention of movable type in Europe (see printing press), along with innovations in casting the type based on a matrix and hand mould. Gutenberg was the first to create his type pieces from an alloy of lead, tin and antimony – the same components still used today.^[1]

Compared to woodblock printing, movable type pagesetting was quicker and more durable. The metal type pieces were more durable and the lettering was more uniform, leading to typography and fonts. The high quality and relatively low price of the Gutenberg Bible (1455) established the superiority of movable type, and printing presses rapidly spread across Europe, leading up to the Renaissance, and later all around the world. Today, practically all movable type printing ultimately derives from Gutenberg's movable type printing, which is often regarded as the most important invention of the second millennium.^[2]

[edit] Precursors

[edit] Origin of the letterpunch

This article or section is missing citations and/or footnotes. This article or section may use words or ideas of other works in its text without citing sources. Using citations to support claims outside the realm of elementary knowledge helps guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies. Please improve the article or discuss this issue on the talk page. Help on using footnotes is available. This article has been tagged since January 2007.

Movable type traces its origins to the punches used to make coins: the reverse face of a Tetradrachm Greek coin from Athens, 5th century BCE, featuring letters and the owl symbol of Athena.

The technique of imprinting multiple copies of symbols or glyphs with a master type punch made of hard metal first developed in coining around 3000 BC in ancient Sumer. Bars or ingots of precious metal were imprinted with a distinctive stamped design; the act of stamping the ingots certified them as currency by the power of the authority symbolized by the type image. These metal punch types can be seen as precursors of the letter punches adapted in later millennia to printing with movable metal type.

By 650 BC the ancient Greeks were using larger diameter punches to imprint small page images onto coins and tokens. Cylinder seals were a related form of early typography capable of printing small page designs in relief (cameo) on wax or clay—a miniature forerunner of rotogravure printing used by wealthy individuals to seal and certify documents.

The artists who made the first coin punches were in effect the first typographers and type designers. Their designs, including glyphs and words, were stylized with a degree of skill that could not be mistaken for common handiwork—salient and very specific types designed to be reproduced ad infinitum. Unlike the first typefaces used to print books in the 13th century, coin types were neither combined or printed with ink on paper, but "published" in metal—a more durable medium—and survived in substantial numbers. As the portable face of ruling authority, coins were a compact form of standardized knowledge issued in large editions, an early mass medium that stabilized trade and civilization throughout the Mediterranean world of antiquity.

[edit] The Phaistos Disc

For further information, see Phaistos Disc.

The enigmatic Minoan Phaistos Disc (1800-1600 BC) can be considered an early example of a body of text being reproduced with reusable characters: it was produced by pressing pre-formed hieroglyphic "seals" into the soft clay. Some authors even view the disc as technically meeting all definitional criteria to represent an early, if not the earliest incidence of movable type printing,^[3] although this characterization has not been accepted universally.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Woodblock printing

Main article: Woodblock printing

Yuan dynasty woodblock edition of a Chinese play

Prior to the development of metal movable type, printing was performed with blocks carved from wood. A counterpart to metal type punches, woodblocks were used by scribes in Ancient Egypt to stamp common hieroglyphic symbols into tiles.^[4]

Woodblock printing with text and illustrations on paper was first recorded in China in the 5th century.^{[citation needed]} This, and the invention of paper in China, led to a proliferation of printing activity. By the 8th century entire books were being printed with carved blocks of wood or stone in China, Korea and Japan.^{[citation needed]}

In 764 the Japanese empress Shotoku commemorated the end of an eight-year civil war by commissioning one million small printed prayers, the endeavour requiring the labour of 157 men over six years.^[5] In late 10th-century Korea, the complete Buddhist canon Tripitaka of 130,000 pages was printed with carved wooden blocks, using one block for each page.^[6]

The colossal labour involved in book typography using this technique reveals its fundamental limit and points the way forward to the next logical step— printing with movable type-pieces in a modular arrangement, using one type for each character or unit of writing.

[edit] Movable type

[edit] Ceramic movable type

The first known movable type system was created in China around 1040 AD by Pi Sheng (990-1051) (spelled Bi Sheng in the Pinyin system).^[4] Pi Sheng's type was made of baked clay. As described by the Chinese scholar Shen Kuo (1031–1095):

When he wished to print, he took an iron frame and set it on the iron plate. In this he placed the types, set close together. When the frame was full, the whole made one solid block of type. He then placed it near the fire to warm it. When the paste [at the back] was slightly melted, he took a smooth board and pressed it over the surface, so that the block of type became as even as a whetstone.

For each character there were several types, and for certain common characters there were twenty or more types each, in order to be prepared for the repetition of characters on the same page. When the characters were not in use he had them arranged with paper labels, one label for each rhyme-group, and kept them in wooden cases.^[7]

However, Pi Sheng's fragile clay types were not practical for large-scale printing.^[8] Clay types also have the additional handicap of lacking adhesion to the ink.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Wooden movable type

Wooden movable type was developed by the 13th century.^{[citation needed]} Although the wooden type was more durable under the mechanical rigors of handling, repeated printing wore the character faces down, and the types could only be replaced by carving new pieces. This system was later enhanced by pressing wooden blocks into sand and casting metal types from the depression in copper, bronze, iron or tin.^[4] The set of wafer-like metal stamp types could be assembled to form pages, inked, and page impressions taken from rubbings on cloth or paper.^[4]

A particular difficulty posed the logistical problems of handling the several thousand logographs whose command is required for full literacy in Chinese language. It was faster to carve one woodblock per page than to composit a page from so many different types.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Metal movable type in Korea

Main article: History of typography in East Asia

Transition from wood type to metal type occurred ca. 1230 AD during the Goryeo Dynasty of Korea and is credited to Chwe Yun-Ui. A set of ritual books, Sangjong Gogeum Yemun were printed with the movable metal type in 1234.^[9][10] Examples of this metal type are on display in the Asian Reading Room of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.^[11] The oldest extant movable metal print book is the Jikji, printed in Korea in 1377.^[12]

The techniques for bronze casting, used at the time for making coins (as well as bells and statues) were adapted to making metal type. The following description of the Korean font casting process was recorded by the Joseon dynasty scholar Song Hyon (15th c.):

At first, one cuts letters in beech wood. One fills a trough level with fine sandy [clay] of the reed-growing seashore. Wood-cut letters are pressed into the sand, then the impressions become negative and form letters [molds]. At this step, placing one trough together with another, one pours the molten bronze down into an opening. The fluid flows in, filling these negative molds, one by one becoming type. Lastly, one scrapes and files off the irregularities, and piles them up to be arranged.^[9]

A potential solution to the linguistic and cultural bottleneck that held back movable type in Korea for two hundred years appeared in the early 15th century—a generation before Gutenberg would begin working on his own movable type invention in Europe—when King Sejong devised a simplified alphabet of 24 characters (Hangul) for use by the common people, which could have made the typecasting and compositing process more feasible. But Sejong's brilliant creation did not receive the attention it deserved. Adoption of the new alphabet was stifled by the inertia of Korea's cultural elite, who were "…appalled at the idea of losing Chinese, the badge of their elitism."^[4]

(Add) Early January 2007 the recently discovered oldest movable types in Korea were on display. They have been dated to the mid-15th century. Hangul, the script of Korea has been invented by King Sejong of the Joson Dynasty who reigned between 1418 and 1450.

Proliferation of movable type was also obstructed by a "Confucian prohibition on the commercialization of printing" restricted the distribution of books produced using the new method to the government.^[13] The technique was restricted to use by the royal foundry for official state publications only, where the focus was on reprinting Chinese classics lost in 1126 when Korea's libraries and palaces had perished in a conflict between dynasties.^[13]

During the Mongol Empire (1206–1405), printing using movable type spread from Korea. The Uighurs of Central Asia used movable type, their script type adopted from the Mongol language.

Despite some conjectures (also see^[9]) there is no evidence that movable type from the East ever reached Europe.

[edit] Metal movable type in Europe

For the development of typographic design and style see History of western typography. Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz is acknowledged as the first to invent a metal movable type printing system in Europe. Gutenberg was a goldsmith familiar with techniques of cutting punches for making coins from moulds. Between 1435 and 1450 he developed hardware and techniques for casting letters from matrices using a device called the hand mould. Gutenberg's key invention and contribution to movable type printing in Europe, the hand mould was the first practical means of making cheap copies of letterpunches in the vast quantities needed to print complete books, making the movable type printing process a viable enterprise.

Gutenberg and his associates developed oil-based inks ideally suited to printing with a press on paper, and the first Latin typefaces. His method of casting type may have been different from the hand mould used in subsequent decades. Detailed analysis of the type used in his 42-line Bible has revealed irregularities in some of the characters that cannot be attributed to ink spread or type wear under the pressure of the press. Scholars conjecture that the type pieces may have been cast from a series of matrices made with a series of individual stroke punches, producing many different versions of the same glyph.^[14] It has also been suggested that the method used by Gutenberg involved using a single punch to make a mould, but the mould was such that the process of taking the type out disturbed the casting, creating variants and anomalies, and that the punch-matrix system came into use possibly around the 1470s.^[15] This raises the possibility that the development of movable type in the West may have been progressive rather than a single innovation.^[16]

Gutenberg's movable type printing system spread rapidly across Europe, from the single Mainz press in 1457 to 110 presses by 1480, of which 50 were in Italy. Venice quickly became the center of typographic and printing activity. Significant were the contributions of Nicolas Jenson, Francesco Griffo, Aldus Manutius, and other printers of late 15th-century Europe.

[edit] Type-founding

A piece of cast metal type, Garamond style long s / i ligature. See also: Sort (typesetting).

Type-founding as practiced in Europe and the west consists of three stages.

Punchcutting: If the glyph design includes enclosed spaces (counters), a counterpunch is made. The counter shapes are transferred in relief (cameo) onto the end of a rectangular bar of mild steel using a specialized engraving tool called a graver. The finished counterpunch is hardened by heating and quenching (tempering), or exposure to a cyanide solution (case hardening).

The counterpunch is then struck against the end of a similar rectangular steel bar—the letterpunch—to impress the counter shapes as recessed spaces (intaglio). The outer profile of the glyph is completed by scraping away with a graver the material outside the counter spaces, leaving only the stroke or lines of the glyph. Progress toward the finished design is checked by successive smoke proofs; temporal prints made from a thin coating of carbon deposited on the punch surface by a candle flame. The finished letterpunch is finally hardened to withstand the rigors of reproduction by striking.

One counterpunch and one letterpunch are produced for every letter or glyph making up a complete font.

Matrix: The letterpunch is used to strike a blank die of soft metal to make a negative letter mould, called a matrix.

Casting: The matrix is inserted into the bottom of a device called a hand mould. The mould is clamped shut and molten type metal alloy consisting mostly of lead and tin, with a small amount of antimony for hardening, is poured into a cavity from the top. When the type metal has sufficiently cooled the mould is unlocked and a rectangular block approximately 4 centimeters long, called a sort, extracted. Excess casting on the end of the sort, called the tang, is later removed to make the sort the precise height required for printing, known as "type height", approximately 0.918 inches.

[edit] Typesetting

Individual letters are assembled into words and lines of text with the aid of a composing stick, and the whole assembly is tightly bound together to make up a page image called a forme, where all letter faces are exactly the same height to form a flat surface of type. The forme is mounted on a printing press, a thin coating of viscous ink is applied and impressions made on paper under great pressure in the press. "Sorts" is the term given to special characters not freely available in the typical type case, such as the "@" mark, etc.

[edit] See also

• History of western typography
• Spread of printing
• Type foundry
• Typesetting
• Odhecaton — the first sheet music printed with movable type

[edit] References

[edit] Literature

• Nesbitt, Alexander The History and Technique of Lettering (c) 1957, Dover Publications, Inc. ISBN 0486402819 , Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 57-13116. The Dover edition is an abridged and corrected republication of the work originally published in 1950 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. under the title Lettering: The History and Technique of Lettering as Design.