Movable Type

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Clay tablets on a card issued by Sketchley Cleaners in 1960.  Number 5 in a series of 25 'Communications' was Clay Tablets

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The same image and information used by Amalgamated Tobacco in 1961

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Coat of Arms of the foundrymen

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Casting Metal Type    Youtube video
Short film showing punch cutting and then casting a piece of type.

Demonstration on how to cast metal type for use on a Gutenberg printing press.

https://youtu.be/u--84uPhNSU

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Franklin Mint History of Mankind Set - Gutenberg's Invention Of Movable Type Stimulates Learning - 1454.   Issued from 1974 until 1982.
I have put it this thread rather than the Gutenberg as it specifically mentions moveable type

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Typefounder from Gartmann Schokolade. This card dates from the early 1900s
Apologies for the standard of the scans

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Hot metal image on a Nestle Chocolate card from a series 'Marvels of the World' - 'From Gutenberg to Gravure'     (year unknown)

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A chocolate card showing Gutenberg casting his type

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One Million Copies Printed; The First Large Scale Mass Production

Between 764 and 770 CE the Japanese Empress Shtukutu commissioned one million small three-story pagodas carved from cypress wood containing Buddhist charms, or dharani scrolls, printed from woodblocks on paper made from hemp fibre, as thanks for the suppression of the Emi Rebellion by Fujiwara no Nakamaro in 764. This has been called the first large scale mass production, and "the world's oldest  verifiable printed matter."

"For printing, the Japanese are thought to have used eight cast bronze plates - 1,000 years before the European use of stereotyping. Using hand inking and burnishing the back of the paper, the printers took 125,000 prints from the plates"

"900,000 pagodas were distributed to temples around the entire country. 100,000 were divided between the Ten Great temples in the Nara area, which erected special halls for these pagodas, known as the Small Pagoda Hall, or the Ten Thousand Pagoda Hall. 4 different texts were printed, all from the Mukujoko [Muku joko] sutra: Kompon Dharani, Storin Dharani, Jishin-in Dharani, and Rokudo Dharani"

[Dave Hughes]

A great video from PBS:

https://www.facebook.com/NOVApbs/videos/250916994176530

The Printing Press Revolutionized the Spread of Information

Published: October 8, 2020

Narrator: The printing revolution began in the German town of Mainz, in 1448, when Johannes Gutenberg, a goldsmith by trade, began casting the letters of the Latin alphabet in metal.

Joost Depuydt: Gutenberg was looking for a way to produce multiple copies of the same text in a much faster way than scribes could copy texts in the manuscript period.

Narrator: Gutenberg's idea was to speed up the process of putting words on a page by replacing the scribe with a machine. The secret of Gutenberg's printing press was his ability to mass produce multiple copies in metal of each individual letter. And in this he had a hidden advantage, the nature of the Latin alphabet.

Brody Neuenschwander: The letters of the Latin alphabet are really very simple shapes, and when you write them in the way they would have been written at the time printing was invented, all the letters are very clearly separate. This is a modular way of writing, and, in fact, if I want to make little blocks of metal with them, no problem, because I'm already, I'm already there, basically. The design has already happened. These simple block-like letters can become blocks of metal and can be printed.

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Commemoration of 300 year anniversary of the death of Laurens Coster

Face - Bust of Laurens Coster, wearing hat and fur trimmed collar.
Reverse - Printing press.

Designed by: Gerard Marshoorn  1740



Diameter: 36 millimetres

Inscription on face - LAUR COSTERUS JANI F SEN HARL TYP INV
G MARSHOORN HARL fec

Inscription on reverse - INV 1428 PERVULG 1440 III JUB 1740

Inscription on book - SPE- CUL HUMA SAL VATI ONIS
Inscription transliteration: Speculum Humanae Salvationis
Inscription translation: Mirror of Human Salvation

Inscription at base TYPOGRAPHIA HARLEMI G M

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The NY Tribune Issues "The Tribune Book of Open-Air Sports", the First Book Typeset by the "Mergenthaler Machine," later called Linotype

In 1887 The New York Tribune newspaper published the first book typeset by Linotype, The Tribune Book of Open-Air Sports. The New York Tribune was the first newspaper to use the Linotype, introducing mechanized typesetting for the first time in its issue of July 3, 1886.

Printed on the front and back pastedown endpapers the well-produced and attractively bound book was a statement that the book could be obtained only with a one-year paid subscription to The New York Tribune Weekly, Semi-Weekly, or Daily. Only the title page of this 500 page book was printed from hand-set type.

On the verso of the title page was printed two lines set in small nonpareil capitals and small caps:
"This Book is Printed Without Type, being the First Product in Book Form of the Mergenthaler Machine which wholly Supersedes the Use of Movable Type."

At this time the Mergenthaler typesetting machine was not yet known as the Linotype.

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BUGRA was the abbreviation for the 1914 International Exhibition for the Book Trade and Graphics which was held in Leipzig.
Advertising stamp of the type foundry

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I have this hanging on my wall ...

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Medal on the occasion of the third centenary of the invention of the printing press.

Right-handed bust of Laurens Janszoon Coster.


Eight-line poem, including the Haarlem city coat of arms.