Moveable type. Image source: Flickr. purdman1

Printing Press

Gutenberg’s invention for moveable type gave us the ability to mass produce not only type and books, but the printing and manufacturing business. Either scribes had to hand copy manuscripts or early books could be printed from hand carved wooden blocks, mainly in China, but this method was inefficient at printing full pages, as the blocks were fragile and didn’t last very long, due to the ink. However, Gutenberg’s method revolutionised printing. He made metal moulds, by using dies, which molten metal was poured into, to reproduce letters as if they were written by hand but durable and more legible, making this practice accessible to the masses. These letters could be arranged and rearranged to create as many different texts in as many copies as the printer wanted. Along with these letters, Gutenberg utilised wine presses to press the moveable type to paper. By rolling ink over the raised metal letters enclosed in a wooden frame, the frame was then lowered and pressed onto the paper, making impressions on both sides. The ink and press can then be reset to make multiple copies of a text.

Gutenberg apparently didn’t put his name on any of his work, but was the first known to create a book entirely of moveable type. Gutenberg’s Bible was made up of 42 lines of text in Latin, to allow for illumination and decoration, and still took over a year to complete, significantly shorter than the previous methods of reproducing manuscripts. It is estimated that around 200 copies were originally printed of Gutenberg’s Bible on paper and a few limited editions on expensive vellum, fine parchment make from calf skin, almost completed by 1454 and ready for sale the following year. 

Wooden Type

Wood type posters were created as a printing method that was cheap to produce on a larger scale. The printing industry was expanding due to the influences of William Morris and the Arts & Crafts Movement and the wood type process was ideal for cheaply making large individual letters, as wood was widely available and light weight. In 1828, a wood type catalogue was created by Darius Wells, he mentioned the advantages of wood type printing. For example, wood was half the cost of metal type with each letter having a smoother finish and less chance of the printed letters distorting due to metal type cooling unequally. Wells also created a more efficient way of cutting out the wood block letters by using a pantograph and lateral router to create a more streamlined result and adapted techniques for production. Following Wells, there was a wave of other craftsmen and designers ready to adapt and develop the wood type printing methods to keep up with the machinery it needed to keep up with. Wood type printing was a popular method for advertising, the Hamilton Holly Wood Type Company was founded to produce type for advertisements, newspaper headlines, circus posters and packaging. After many wood type printer shops, popping up across America the demand for wood type posters wore off towards the 1920s and other art movements became the trend.