But this was a long time in the making. First China invented wooden blocks that were carved with letters or whole words around 2000 years ago. Then in the mid 1400s a guy with the name of Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany which was in the heart of German wine growing region. He built a printing press on the same idea as the wine presses of his day. Using movable type in his printing press he opened a whole new process of printing.
As the printing process spread so did the number of people who could read and the number who could afford to reproduce their ideas, there religious thoughts, and the news of the day’s events.
But that’s history. I want to talk about the Art of Printing with the letterpress. It was just as creative as photography or oil painting, in Gutenbergs time an apprentice would work for 6 to 10 years before he could be called a printer, and even more before being called a Master Printer. The process required understanding of paper, ink, and the nimbleness of placing very and I mean very little letters in reverse order so when the letters were inked and were pressed in to the paper it would read correct. Even the measurements were different in printing. Pica and points were used. 6pt to a 12pt pica. When lead type was first invented they made a cast 1 inch in height. When it cooled it shrank to .918 which is what we call type high, one more new measurement for the printer to use. The measurements for amount of space side to side where called M’s and N’s for a cap letter M was the largest width of a letter and an N was ½ of that.
The arrival of the letter press changed the way we communicate maybe more than any other form of communication in history. With people like Gutenberg and Ben Franklin pushing the process in to everyday lives.
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