Movable type is the system of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual letters or punctuation).

The world's first known movable-type system for printing was created in China around 1040 A.D. by Pi Sheng (990–1051) during the Song Dynasty;^[1] following that, the first metal movable-type system for printing was made in Korea during the Goryeo Dynasty (around 1230). This led to the printing of the Jikji in 1377—today the oldest extant movable metal print book. The diffusion of both movable-type systems was, however, limited:^[2] They were expensive, and required an enormous amount of labour involved in manipulating the thousands of ceramic tablets, or in the case of Korea, metal tablets required for scripts based on the Chinese writing system, which have thousands of characters.

Around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press and independently developed a movable type system in Europe, along with innovations in casting the type based on a matrix and hand mould. The more limited number of characters needed for European languages was an important factor.^[3] Gutenberg was the first to create his type pieces from an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony—the same components still used today.^[4]

For alphabetic scripts, movable-type page setting was quicker and more durable than woodblock printing. The metal type pieces were more durable and the lettering was more uniform, leading to typography and fonts. The printing press was especially efficient for limited alphabets. The high quality and relatively low price of the Gutenberg Bible (1455) established the superiority of movable type in Europe and the use of printing presses spread rapidly. The printing press may be regarded as one of the key factors fostering the Renaissance^[5] and due to its effectiveness its use spread around the globe.

The 19th century invention of Hot metal typesetting and its successors caused movable to decline in the 20th century.

Precursors to movable type[link]

Letter punch and coins[link]

The technique of imprinting multiple copies of symbols or glyphs with a master type punch made of hard metal first developed around 3000 BC in ancient Sumer. Bricks for buildings and bars or ingots of precious metal were imprinted with a distinctive stamped design; the act of stamping the ingots certified them as currency^{[citation needed]} 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. Cylinder seals were also used to "sign" documents and mark objects as the owner's property.

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 designs of the artists who made the first coin punches 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 thirteenth century, coin types were neither combined nor 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.

Phaistos Disc[link]

A replica of the Phaistos Disc

The enigmatic Minoan Phaistos Disc of 1800–1600 BC has been considered by one scholar as an early example of a body of text being reproduced with reusable characters: it may have been produced by pressing pre-formed hieroglyphic "seals" into the soft clay. A few authors even view the disc as technically meeting all definitional criteria to represent an early, if not the earliest incidence of movable-type printing.^[6][7] Recently it has been alleged by Jerome Eisenberg that the disk is a forgery.^[8]

Woodblock printing[link]

Following the invention of paper in the Han Dynasty, writing materials became more portable and economical than the bones, shells, bamboo slips, metal or stone tablets, silk, etc. previously used. Yet copying books by hand was still labour-consuming. Not until the Xiping Era (172-178 AD) towards the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty did sealing print and monotype appear. It was soon used for printing designs on fabrics, and later for printing texts.

Woodblock printing worked as follows. First, the neat hand-copied script was stuck on a relatively thick and smooth board, with the front of the paper, which was so thin that it was nearly transparent, sticking to the board, and characters showing in opposite, so distinctly that every stroke could be easily recognized. Then, carvers cut the parts with no character off the board with knives, so that the characters were cut in relief, completely different from those cut in intaglio. When printing, the bulging characters would have some ink spread on them and be covered by paper. With workers’ hands moving on the back of paper gently, characters would be printed on the paper. By the Song Dynasty, woodblock printing came to its heyday. Although woodblock printing played an influential role in spreading culture, there were still some apparent drawbacks. Firstly, carving the printing plate cost too much time and too much labour and materials; secondly, it was not convenient to store these plates; and finally, it was difficult to correct mistakes.

With woodblock printing, one printing plate could be used for tens of hundreds of books, playing a magnificent role in spreading culture. Yet carving the plate was time and labour consuming. Huge books cost years of effort. The plates needed a lot of storage space, and were often damaged by deformation, worms and corrosion. If books had a small print run, and were not reprinted, the printing plates would become nothing but waste; and worse, if a mistake was found, it was difficult to correct it without discarding the whole plate.

History of Movable type[link]

Prior to the development of metal movable type, most printing was done using blocks carved from wood. Woodblock printing was used extensively in East Asia, and created the world's first print culture.

Ceramic movable type[link]

The first known movable-type system for printing using ceramic materials was created in China around 1040 AD by Bi Sheng (990–1051).^[9] 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.^[10]

If one were to print only two or three copies, this method would be neither simple nor easy. But for printing hundreds or thousands of copies, it was marvelously quick. As a rule he kept two forms going. While the impression was being made from the one form, the type was being put in place on the other. When the printing of the one form was finished, the other was then ready. In this way the two forms alternated and the printing was done with great rapidity.^[11]

In 1193, Zhou Bida, an officer of Southern Song Dynasty, made a set of clay movable-type method according to the method described by Shen Kuo in his Dream Pool Essays, and printed his book Notes of The Jade Hall 《玉堂杂记》.^[12]

As late as 1844 there were still books printed in China with clay movable types.^[12] However, Bi Sheng's fragile clay types were not practical for large-scale printing.^[13] Sohn Pow-Key claimed that Bi Sheng's baked clay was "fragile" was refuted by facts and experiments, Bao Shicheng(1775–1885) wrote that baked clay moveable type was "as hard and tough as horn"; experiments show that baked clay moveable type is hard and difficult to break, a clay moveable type dropped from a height of two metres onto a marble floor remained intact. Korea could have tried clay movable type, but with little success, probably due to misinterpration of Shen Kua's description "as thin as coin", which referred to the depth of the mould, not the total length of the moveable type. The length of clay movable types in China was 1 to 2 centimetres, not 2mm, thus hard as horn.^[14]

Wooden movable type[link]

Yuan dynasty woodblock edition of a Chinese play

Wooden movable type was also first developed around 1040 AD by Bi Sheng (毕昇) (990–1051), as described by the Chinese scholar Shen Kuo (1031–1095), but was abandoned in favour of clay movable types due to the presence of wood grains and the unevenness of the wooden type after being soaked in ink.^[15] In 1298, Wang Zhen, a governmental official of Jingde, Anhui province, China, re-invented a method of making movable wooden types. He made more than 30,000 wooden movable types and printed 100 copies of Records of Jingde County (旌德县志), a book of more than 60,000 Chinese characters. Soon afterwards, he summarized his invention in his book A method of making moveable wooden types for printing books. 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.^[9] 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.^[9] In 1322，a Fenghua county officer Ma Chengde(马称德) in Zhejiang, made 100,000 wooded movable types and printed 43 volume Daxue Yanyi (大学衍义). Wooden movable types were used continually in China. Even as late as 1733, a 2300 volume, 《武英殿聚珍版丛书》, was printed with 253500 wooden movable type on order of the Yongzheng Emperor, and completed in one year.

A number of books printed in Tangut script during the Western Xia (1038–1227) period are known, of which the Auspicious Tantra of All-Reaching Union that was discovered in the ruins of Baisigou Square Pagoda in 1991 is believed to have been printed sometime during the reign of Emperor Renzong of Western Xia (1139–1193).^[16] It is considered by many Chinese experts to be the earliest extant example of a book printed using wooden movable type.^[17] Wooden type was used again during the later parts of the 19th century. At some point during the Industrial Revolution, the usage of wooden movable type was made popular again (a printer named Darius Wells used it extensively) for poster designs since wooden types were more economical, lighter, and efficient than metal type .^[18]

Metal movable type[link]

Transition from wood type to metal type occurred in 1234 during the Goryeo Dynasty of Korea and is credited to Choe Yun-ui. A set of ritual books, Sangjeong Gogeum Yemun were printed with the movable metal type in 1234.^[19][20] Examples of this metal type are on display in the Asian Reading Room of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.^[21] The oldest extant movable metal print book is the Jikji, printed in Korea in 1377.^[22]

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 Seong Hyeon (성현, 成俔, 1439–1504):

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.^[19]

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 the Great 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."^[9]

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.^[23] 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.^[23]

In the early fifteenth century, however, the Koreans invented a form of movable type that has been described by the French scholar Henri-Jean Martin as '[extremely similar] to Gutenberg's'; the Western invention may have been stimulated by what had happened in the East.^[24]

A page from bronze movable-type book by Hua Sui, printed in 1490

Metal movable type elsewhere in Asia[link]

In the beginning of twelfth century, movable type was used in large scale for the printing of paper money issued by the Northern Song Dynasty. A copper block printed paper money dated between 1215-1216 in the collection of Luo Zhenyu's Pictorial Paper Money of the Four Dynasties, 1914, shows two special characters one called Ziliao, the other called Zihao for the purpose of preventing counterfeit; over the Ziliao there is a small character (輶) printed with movable copper type, while over the Zihao there is an empty square hole, apparently the associated copper metal type was lost. Another sample of Song dynasty money of the same period in the collection of Shanghai Museum has two empty square holes above Ziliao as well as Zihou, due to lost of the two copper movable types. Song dynasty bronze block embedded with bronze metal movable type printed paper money was issued in large scale and in circulation for a long time.^[25] In the 1298 book Zao Huozi Yinshufa (造活字印书法/造活字印書法) of the Chinese official Wang Zhen, there is mention of tin movable type, but this was largely experimental.^[26] There's also some claims of more early Chinese metal movable type, some dates back to 1148 AD.^{[27][28][verification needed]}

In 1574 the massive 1000 volume encyclopedia Imperial Readings of the Taiping Era 《太平御览》/《太平御覧》 were printed with bronze movable type.

In1725，the Qing Dynasty government made 250,000 bronze movable-type characters and printed 64 sets of the encyclopedic Gujin Tushu Jicheng Complete Collection of Illustrations and Writings from the Earliest to Current Times 《古今图书集成》/《古今圖書集成》. Each set consisted of 5040 volumes, making a total of 322,560 volumes printed using movable type.

During the Mongol Empire (1206–1405), printing using movable type spread from China to Central Asia.^{[clarification needed]} The Uyghurs of Central Asia used movable type, their script type adopted from the Mongol language, some with Chinese words printed between the pages, a strong evidence that the books were printed in China.^[29]

Metal movable type in Europe[link]

The Printing Revolution in the fifteenth century: Within several decades around 270 European towns took up movable type printing.^[30]

European output of movable type printing from Gutenberg to 1800^[31]

Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz is acknowledged as the first to invent a metal movable-type printing system in Europe, the printing press. Gutenberg was a goldsmith familiar with techniques of cutting punches for making coins from moulds. Between 1436 and 1450 he developed hardware and techniques for casting letters from matrices using a device called the hand mould.^[32] 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.

Before Gutenberg, books were copied out by hand on scrolls and paper, or printed from hand-carved wooden blocks. It was extremely time-consuming, even a small book could take months to complete, and the carved letters or blocks were very flimsy and the susceptibility of wood to ink gave such blocks a limited lifespan.

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.^[33] 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.^[34] This raises the possibility that the development of movable type in the West may have been progressive rather than a single innovation.^[35]

Gutenberg's movable-type printing system spread rapidly across Europe, from the single Mainz printing 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 fifteenth-century Europe. Despite some conjectures (see^[19]), there is no evidence that movable type from the East ever reached Europe.

The historical impact of movable type in China[link]

Prior to the invention of movable type, "woodblock printing" was used in China to print an entire page of a specific text. This technique had been used for centuries, particularly for languages that relied on thousands of characters.

Movable type was invented in China by Bi Sheng during the Northern Song Dynasty. Bi Sheng used clay types, hardened by baking them in fire, to create the first movable type. However, these types were too fragile for large-scale printing. Wang Zhen, a government official, later improved the system by instead creating types out of more durable wood. This new method overcame many of the shortcomings of woodblock printing. Rather than manually carving an individual block to print a single page, movable type printing allowed for the quick assembly of a page of text. Furthermore, these new, more compact type fonts could be reused and stored.

Although Bi Sheng's invention is considered by some archaeologists to be the beginning of typography in China, it failed to become widely used at the time.

Type-founding[link]

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) then 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; temporary 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. Antimony has the rare property of expanding as it cools, giving the casting sharp edges^[36] . When the type metal has sufficiently cooled, the mould is unlocked and a rectangular block approximately 4 centimeters long, called a sort, is 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".

The type-height was quite different in different countries, the Monotype Corporation Limited in London UK produced moulds in various heights:

• 0.918 inches : United Kingdom, Canada, USA
• 0.928 inches : France, Germany, Swiss and most other European Countries
• 0.933 inches : Belgium height
• 0.9785 inches : Dutch height

A Dutch printers manual ^[37] mentions a tiny difference between French and German Height:

• 62.027 points Didot = 23.30 mm = English height
• 62.666 points Didot = 23.55 mm = French height
• 62.685 points Didot = 23.56 mm = German height
• 66.047 points Didot = 24.85 mm = Dutch Height

Tiny differences in type-height will cause quite bold images of characters.

Typesetting[link]

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

Modern, factory-produced movable type was available in the late nineteenth century. It was held in the printing shop in a job case, a drawer about 2 inches high, a yard wide, and about two feet deep, with many small compartments for the various letters and ligatures. The most popular and accepted of the job case designs in America was the California Job Case, which took its name from the Pacific coast location of the foundries that made the case popular.^[38]

Regardless of who actually invented the case, in order to make his typesetting more efficient, the inventor arranged the compartments according to the letters' frequency of use. The more frequent letters (t, n, e, i, o, r) are arranged in a rough circle directly in front of the typesetter, while the less-frequently used letters and characters are farther away. The arrangement of the letters in the California Job Case became so popular and commonly adopted that a skilled typesetter could "read" the text set by another typesetter, just by watching the positions of the compartments where the typesetter reached for his letters.

The California Job Case has three sections, with the rightmost sections containing capital letters in alphabetic order except for the "J" and "U", moved to the lowest line to help avoid confusing them with "I" and "V" respectively. The lower case letters and punctuation marks are in the left and center sections, with the numbers 1 to 8 at the top of the center section, while the ligatures (combined letters, such as "ff", "fi", "æ" etc.) are in various locations about the exterior.

In addition to placing the most commonly used letters in setting text in a given language in the easiest positions for the typesetter to get to, the characters' boxes varied in size depending upon the frequency of usage of the character. Thus for English the "e" box is the largest while the "j", "k", "q", "x", and "z" boxes are the smallest.

Prior to the adoption of the California Job Case, the capital letters were stored in a separate drawer or case that was located above the case that held the other letters; this is why capital letters are called "upper case" characters while the non-capitals are "lower case".^[39]

Other large compartments in the California Job Case held spacers, which are blocks of blank type used to separate words and fill out a line of type, such as em and en quads (quadrats, or spaces. A quadrat is a block of type whose face is lower than the printing letters so that it does not itself print.). An em space was the width of a capital letter "M" – as wide as it was high – while an en space referred to a space half the width of its height (usually the dimensions for a capital "N").

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.

See also[link]

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

References[link]

Literature[link]

• Nesbitt, Alexander The History and Technique of Lettering (c) 1957, Dover Publications, Inc. ISBN 0-486-40281-9, 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.

• The classic manual of hand-press technology is

Moxon, Joseph (1683–84). Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing (ed. Herbert Davies & Harry Carter. New York: Dover Publications, 1962, reprint ed.) 

External links[link]

Media related to Printing letters at Wikimedia Commons

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