Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/305

Rh any types made in the infancy of the art, could have been cut on wood or metal. There is a tradition, which has found its way in many popular treatises on typography, and even in encyclopædias, that the first types were cut or sawed out of wood. We are told that separate letters, drawn at graduated distances, were engraved on blocks of wood, and that a saw cutting through the intervening spaces separated the fixed letters and made movable types. According to Meerman, the uncouthness of the types of the Abcedarium is fully explained by the acceptance of this tradition. It is necessary, at the outset, to show the impracticability of these imaginary types of wood. This can be done in no better way than by presenting the illustrations of Leon De la Borde, one of the most eminent defenders of the theory. In these engravings, we see how the letters were drawn on the blocks, how lines were marked out to guide the saw that cut them apart, and how the dissected letters were recombined in new positions.

But this illustration really proves the reverse of what was intended: it proves that types may be cut out of wood, but that they cannot be used after they have been cut. In this third illustration, the lines of type are separated by leads, but the types stand more unevenly in line than the letters of any xylographic book. It is obvious to every printer that they could not have been printed at all, if they had not been