It is very broadly agreed that Johann Gutenberg’s 1454/55 42-line Bible represents the earliest extant example of a complete book produced by using the new invention of moveable type. It has been further agreed that in order for Gutenberg to mass produce each letter form, he must have used replica casting to achieve consistency, and to do this, it has been generally assumed that Gutenberg invented the punch and matrix system of letter-casting. Yet, documentation for such a system does not appear until the 1470s.
As one can see from our facsimile of the Mazarin Library copy of the Bible (published in Paris in two volumes with two volumes of commentary texts by Éditions Les Incunables in 1985), it seems clear that by the mid 1450s Gutenberg had perfected his techniques well enough to produce this exquisitely-printed artifact (the decoctive initials, however, are all completed by hand, as was the practice throughout the period of incunabula). But if you look very closely at these pages (click on the images for a better view), you will note that no two letters from the same page are exactly the same, which would not be the case if the letters had been cast from the same mold. If they were, they'd be identical. As a close-up example, we also present a series of a’s taken from the first 11 lines of the Bible which we found on the internet. Yet, identical repetitions of these individual letters can be found on other pages, which suggests that the same types were reused.
These discrepancies had been noted as early as the 18th century, but Princeton special collections librarian and printing historian Paul Needham and 1998 Princeton physics graduate Blaise Agüera y Arcas conducted experiments on Gutenberg’s types in 2001 using sophisticated digital imaging software and made some startling discoveries.
It became obvious that the variations couldn't have come from wear and tear of the types themselves, and they could not be explained away through different amounts of ink on the type. They concluded that Gutenberg may have used an earlier technology that involves casting letters in molds of sand -- molds that could not be reused because one had to break them apart to get the letters out. Furthermore, and perhaps more startling, the forms used to make the mold impressions may not have been single units, but seem to have been constructed in the sand from separate parts, like the individual strokes made by a scribe to construct an individual Gothic letter. As described in the Wikipedia article on Gutenberg:
Transmitted light pictures of the page also revealed substructures in the type that could not arise from punchcutting techniques. They [Agüera y Arcas and Needham] hypothesized that the method involved impressing simple shapes to create alphabets in "cuneiform" style in a mould like sand. Casting the type would destroy the mould, and the alphabet would need to be recreated to make additional type. This would explain the non-identical type, as well as the substructures observed in the printed type.
Just nuts! These scholars now believe that the punch and matrix system probably was invented by another craftsman or craftsmen a few years after Gutenberg's death in 1468. Needham says, "By the later 1470s this new method was in use, but we can't put our finger on the first book." If you are type nerds like us, you can take a deep dive into this research by watching Agüera y Arcas’s hour-and-a-quarter-long Microsoft Research lecture on the subject!
Some other curious facts about the printing of the 42-line Bible: 1.) most but not all pages are printed with 42 lines. Some pages (presumably the ones that were printed first) have only 40 lines, while one page has 41. 2.) In the early stages of the printing, the red headlines before each book of the Bible were printed (as in our first image). This procedure involved passing each sheet under the press twice, but it was soon abandoned, probably because it was too time-consuming. Afterward, the rubrics were intended to be supplied by hand (as can be clearly seen in our last image). No one knows what the print run was for the edition, but the consensus is that it was a bit less than 200 copies, of which only 49 are known to be extant today, and only 21 of these are complete.
This week we present a single page from our single leaf of the first printing of the Catholicon attributed to the print shop of Johann Gutenberg, the acknowledged inventor of printing from movable type, and possibly the inventor of the punch and matrix -- although that has been recently challenged by physicist Blaise Aguera y Arcas and supported by printing historian Paul Needham. Through careful analysis, Aguera y Arcas presents a compelling argument that Gutenberg sand-casted his type (at least in his first two extant publications) rather than using the punch and matrix system! And Aguera y Arcas reveals even more surprising results. For an in-depth analysis, watch his fascinating -- at least to us type nerds -- hour-and-quarter-long Microsoft Research lecture on the topic.
The Catholicon is the third and last imprint believed to come out of Gutenberg’s shop, printed in a newly-cast, Gothically-influenced Antiqua typeface with some humanist tendencies. S. H. Steinberg in his book Five Hundred Years of Printing states that "the type is about a third smaller than that of the 42-line Bible [the first known extant imprint to come out of Gutenberg’s shop]; it is considerably more economical and thus marks an important step towards varying as well as cheapening book-production by the careful choice of type." He further notes that "the book contains a colophon which it is difficult to believe to have been written by anybody but the inventor of printing himself," which reads in part:
With the help of the Most High ... this noble book Catholicon has been printed and accomplished without the help of reed, stylus or pen but by the wondrous agreement, proportion and harmony of punches and types, in the year of our Lord's incarnation 1460 in the noble city of Mainz of the renowned German nation ....
The Catholicon is believed to have been printed in three editions, once during Gutenberg’s lifetime in 1459/60, and two probably after his death in 1468/9 and 1471/2, respectively. By analyzing the evidence of the watermark in our copy (see above), it appears that ours may be from the second printing of 1468/9. A note that came with our leaf indicates that it is from “the incomplete Sloan-Krech copy of the Catholicon which was broken up and sold shortly after World War II.” A great shame, really, but it’s hard not to be grateful to hold a leaf from the last known imprint of Gutenberg’s press.
