Movable Type

Few inventions can boast to have had the impact movable type has had on human history. The invention of the printing press in 1450 by Johannes Gutenberg marked the beginning of a revolution in the way information was accessed, preserved, and shared. While other civilizations had developed early versions of the printing press, the European rendition of this innovation would be the first to see widespread adoption and influence. This sudden shift to a literate society was influenced by a complex mix of social, cultural, and economic factors. This essay will give a concise history of movable type and illustrate its immediate impacts on reading and writing cultures.

The Historical Development of Printing

Before the movable type, most written material in Western Europe was produced by hand. The production of a manuscript was a long, laborious process that had remained relatively unchanged since before 1000. Scribes wrote on parchment, using goose quills, and once the text was copied it would be subject to further post-processing with illustration, rubrication, and binding – all contributing to the manuscript’s high cost and rarity.

The rapid spread of printing in Western Europe can be attributed to the conditions that existed prior to Gutenberg’s invention. The main underlying factor was the rise of large towns and urban centers: in Western Europe, excluding major cities, only two large towns had populations exceeding 20,000 at the beginning of the 13th century. By the end of the 15th century, 22 towns exceeded this amount, and 8 of them had populations exceeding 50,000. These towns became centers of trade, necessitating written communication, and soon literacy was perceived as a precondition to wealth. Increasing demand for education led to the establishment of the first universities, and consequently, a greater demand for books.

In the mid-1400s, German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg began development of the first movable type in Europe, and by 1450, had successfully developed a machine that could produce extensive printed works consistently and efficiently. First, metal types were cast with a mirror image of an alphabetical letter. These types were arranged (composed) in frames or “formes” and placed on the bed of the press, inked with leather balls, and drawn under the platen. The paper, dampened beforehand, was placed on a hinged “tympan” and folded above the typesetting before being pressed down by the platen. The final product was hung to dry before the other side was printed, and sheets of various sizes could be produced.

The 42-line Bible

(Figure 1) A page from the 42-Line Bible.

The first major undertaking by the Gutenberg press was the 42-line Bible, which was intended to resemble a manuscript Bible as closely as possible. In Figure 1, the Latin text has been divided into two columns and leaves ample space for margins, with some copies possessing detailed illuminations in those spaces. The font style itself intentionally mirrors that of missals found in churches, with a large, dense type called ‘textura’ that gave the page a woven look. The hand-inked rubrication is simple but practical: each capital letter is in red, the initial letters are blue, and the headline and chapter numbers are in red and blue. The large font and color made it easy for fast navigation, especially in dark church interiors and lecterns where it was intended for use. To conserve space but remain faithful to the manuscript appearance, Gutenberg used a total of 290 different characters for upper and lower case letters, abbreviations, and ligatures. Most early printed books, or incunables, such as these tried to emulate manuscripts as closely as possible, requiring that the compositor had a nuanced understanding of Latin.

The printing press spread rapidly across Europe after its invention, making prominent inroads in large urban centers, and with it came a massive increase in the number of books printed. Scholars have estimated the number of incunable editions printed before 1501 to be around 27,000 to 29,000. An average print run for each edition would have been around 500, meaning the total number of printed books in circulation in Western Europe likely exceeded 15 million. This mass production of books drastically lowered their cost and rarity and enormously impacted the way people regarded the acquisition and perception of knowledge itself.

The Impact of Printing on Perception and Reading Cultures

Marshall McLuhan notes that “the invention of typography confirmed and extended the new visual stress of applied knowledge, providing the first uniformly repeatable commodity, the first assembly-line, and the first mass production”. In other words, the invention of movable type not only transformed the book into the first mass-produced commodity, but also created social and psychological revolutions marked by a transition from oral to visual conceptions of knowledge. With the rapid proliferation of printed material, knowledge had suddenly been reduced to a homogenized experience akin to that of a film: experiences were reduced to purely a visual, linear, and sequential series of letters. Elizabeth Eisenstein also emphasizes the impact of movable type on thought processes, claiming entire systems of thinking emerged as a direct result of printed books. For example, the alphabetical ordering of data grew in popularity considerably thanks to the ease at which indexes could be copied repeatedly, changing the way people codified and systematized information on a large scale.

Eisenstein contends “the fact that identical images, maps, and diagrams could be viewed simultaneously by scattered readers constituted a kind of communications revolution in itself”. Prior to the mass production of books, knowledge stored in manuscripts was vulnerable to corruption from human error during the scribal copying process. The medium itself was subject to natural degradation, and the manuscript’s rarity meant that many written works were inevitably lost over time. With the ‘democratizing’ effect of printing, the sheer number of books copied meant that their contents could be preserved at a far greater rate and distributed consistently to readers across the continent and beyond. One of the most significant impacts of this ‘typographical fixity’ was the ability to accumulate, add to, and revise established scientific knowledge. Less effort was spent copying books by hand, and more time was spent reading and refining existing maps, diagrams, and texts, giving rise to scholarly practices such as cross-referencing and peer review.

The dynamics between author, reader, and printer were also subject to radical upheavals during this shift. The printer took an active role in the production chain of the book, responsible for negotiating complex realities between reader, author, and those involved in the creation of the physical book. The notion of ‘author’ took a turn with the advent of movable type as well. Prior to its development, the manuscript was an organic, collectively-written composition that sought to bring forth its message in corporeal form. Authorship, according to McLuhan, was “in a large degree the building of a mosaic”. Because of the scribal nature of manuscript production, one could not ascertain for sure if what a writer wrote was his own work or the copy of another book. Movable type effectively solved these issues, and with it came the notion of the individual author who could be recognized for his or her writing talents. The commodification of books meant that text itself had become a good, and authors competed to produce works that would garner mass popularity and acclaim.