A history of type

I thouroughly enjoyed the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Beijing over the weekend. My favorite part was no doubt the display of oversized "movable type" - blocks of individual characters raising, lowering, waving, and patterning in an abstract display of printing with mechanical precision. All of this took place atop a severl hundred foot LED "scroll", and in the end, was of course human powered.

I couldn't find a video of the performance to share, but if you missed it, I highly recommend hunting down the segment on YouTube.

The rule of... rule

About a week ago I hosted the Letterpress Guild of New England for a talk by Sam Ellenport of the Harcourt Bindery. He came to show a video he made about the last day of pen-ruling at the bindery. Though a homemade production, it was heartfelt in its effort to capture the end of an era, as it truly was.



So what is pen-ruling? Pen-ruling is the process by which straight lines were printed (rather, drawn) onto paper to make ledgers and such. The machine built to do this work is circa 1850 and looks like this:



"Pens" in varying widths were set up on the machine and then threaded with ink-soaked wool-yard (of a very ordinary sort) to draw the ink down into the channels. The tops of the yarn bits sat under another ink-soaked piece of felt, to which water-based ink was re-applied as necessary throughout the run.



Cams were set to lift some or all of the pens to stop lines at particular places.

Once the horizontal lines were dry (after being wound down and around the pen-ruler for about 70') the pages were run through the machine again to draw the vertical lines. Since each channel had its own thread, different colors could be run simultaneously (if only the Vandy were capable of such feats...).



The result: beautiful ledger paper for accounting, county registry of deeds, cemetery interment registers and other such things.

Of course nowadays, it's all digital.

Thanks to Sam for preserving a little bit of this history!

Holy Gutenberg, Batman!

No, seriously. Holy and Gutenberg!



David, a student in the Intro to Letterpress class today, shared with us an astonishing treasure - an original page printed on a Gutenberg press, circa 1460!!! Thank you David, for sharing this amazing piece of history.



David's framers did a bang-up job, even glazing a portion of the back so David wouldn't have to bear covering up half of this work of art.



The page is taken from a portion of the service that ordains priests (or maybe bishops? see the woodcut insert). I'm a little fuzzy on whether or not this was actually part of the Bible project, or part of a number of side projects (including "indulgences" for the church!) that Big-G had going on.

[update: my friend Diana, rare-books librarian and expert on many-things, has clarified some of the confusion - she believes this to be a page from the pontifical, the book containing the rites for performance of episcopal functions. Sayeth Di, "I think the prayer is about stripping the bishop of his power if he does wrong, not investing him; in the picture, they're meant to be removing the mitre, not installing it." Thanks, Di!]



Look at the registration! Look at the type! Look at the illuminated letters! Look at the notes in sidebar!

Here is some relevant history about Gutenberg quoted from Wikipedia:

By 1450, the press was most likely in operation, and a German poem had been printed, possibly the first item to be printed there. Gutenberg was able to convince the wealthy moneylender Johan Fust for a loan of 800 guilders. Peter Schoeffer, who became Fust's son-in-law, also joined the enterprise. Shoeffer had worked as a scribe in Paris and designed some of the first typefaces.
...
It is not clear when Gutenberg conceived the Bible project, but for this he borrowed another 800 guilders from Fust, and work commenced in 1452.
...
Sometime in 1455, there was a dispute between Gutenberg and Fust, and Fust demanded his money back, accusing Gutenberg of embezzling funds. Meanwhile the expenses of the Bible project had proliferated, and Gutenberg's debt now exceeded 2,000 guilders. Fust sued at the archbishop's court. A November 1455 legal document records that there was a partnership for a "project of the books," the funds for which Gutenberg had used for other purposes, according to Fust. The court decided in favour of Fust, giving him control over the Bible printing workshop and half of all printed Bibles.

Okay, so the page you see here was printed with Gutenberg's type, on Gutenberg's press, however, it was done after Gutenberg had been booted out of the picture.

Holy holy holy! Gutenberg!

History Lessons

I wanted to share a little piece of family history. My great-grandfather was part of the Eddy Press Corporation in Pittsburgh. Last week my cousin was kind enough to give me one of the books that they printed, and what follow are some images of this fabulous acquisition!







It's inscribed to my great-grandfather by the author.



Back in the day where pages had to be cut...



Look at the embellishments and illumination!