Something About Printing

China, the “cradle of the arts,” claims the honor of the invention of printing. Away back in the year 593, nearly 1,000 years before Gutenberg issued the first volume of his famous bible, the Chinese were using the “block system” of printing, says the St. Louis Republic, and in the tenth century, 400 years before Europe had become acquainted with the “art preservative,” the almond-eyed celestial typos were better versed in the science of setting movable types than were the American printers of the days of Benjamin Franklin. The “block system” of printing, which was so well known in the flowery kingdom less than six centuries after the birth of Christ, did not find its way to Europe until about the first of the fifteenth century, when “devotional manuals,” each bearing a portrait and a few lines in printing, became popular. These cuts and printed lines were taken from engravings made on a single block, the very earliest-dated specimen of that character made in Europe bearing date of 1423. There is still a question as to who was the first European printer to use the movable types. It is not a question as to what Europeans invented movable types, for it is known that the honor belongs in the far east. The honor of being the first to adopt the system appears to rest between Laurenz Coster of Haarlem (died 1440), John Faust and John Gutenberg. In the above list some include the name of Peter Schoffer, as son-in-law of Faust. Dutch authorities claim that Coster was the first to use the movable types, and that Gutenberg, who was at one time a workman in Coster’s shop, stole the idea from him. The Germans give Gutenberg the honor and set the date of his first successful practice of the art at 1436. The first entire European book ever printed from movable types bears the name of Johann Faust on its title page. It bore the name of “Tractatus Petri Hispani” and was printed at Mentz in 1442. As Gutenberg did not put his name on all of his books or the date when they were issued there is some doubt when the first appeared or how many were issued. Gutenberg’s great work was his Latin bible, which appeared in 1456, and which is often catalogued as the “first book ever printed on moveable types.”