THIS PAGE IS PART OF THE SUPPORTING MATERIAL FOR THE MEDIA REPORT ITEM ON THE MUSEUM BROADCAST ON 14 FEB 2008.

HAND TYPESETTING WITH MOVABLE TYPE

Gutenberg was a jeweller by trade and he used his skill to cut, file or grind a piece of steel to make a punch of each required character. The punches are 'male' and wrong-reading (so they could print a right-reading character). The punch would print its character only for testing: when perfectly formed, it would be punched into a slip of softer metal (probably copper in those days) to produce a matrix. The matrix is 'female' and right-reading.

In conjunction with a typecasting mould [mold in US] each matrix could then be used to produce those unlimited quantities of uniformly-sized types. Each type is an exact replica of the punch, although on a rectangular body.

A complete fount [font in US] of type may contain 90 or more different letters, figures, punctuation [points in printer's terms], ligatures and signs, and a total of hundreds or thousands of individual types, all of one size of one typeface.

A fount is usually stored in a typecase (or a pair of typecases), from where the compositor (typesetting person) selects them one-by-one to assemble each line of text. The lines are assembled in the hand-tool called a stick (or composing stick) and then transferred a few lines at a time into a galley, a special tray with one open edge, until a page or 'take' is completed.

After proofing (taking a single print from the page of type for checking purposes) and correcting errors, the pages find their way into a printing press. There, ink is applied to the surface of the type and a sheet of paper is pressed onto it to receive the impression of the text.

This process, whether printed by hand or automatic press, and whether type-set by hand or the Linotype or similar systems, is described by the name Letterpress or letterpress printing.

ANY QUESTIONS? CONTACT US