Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/51

Rh Hubert Van Eyck of Holland, at or about the beginning of the fifteenth century, immediately preceded the invention of types. The early typographic printers, who could not use the ink of the copyists, succeeded only when they mixed their black with oil. After four centuries of experience in the use of printing ink made with oil, and after repeated experimentation with impracticable substitutes, it may be confidently asserted that an invention of typography would have failed, if this use of oil had not been understood. The invention of types had to wait for the invention of ink.

Typography had to wait for the invention of paper, the only material that is mechanically adapted for printing, the only material that supplies the wants of the reader in his requirements for strength, cheapness, compactness and durability. Paper was known in civilized Europe for at least two centuries before typography was invented, but it was not produced in sufficient quantity nor of a proper quality until the beginning of the fifteenth century.

The old Romans had no substitute for paper that could have been devoted to printing or book- making. The papyrus which they used was so brittle that it could not be folded, creased and sewed like modern rag paper. It could not be bound up in books; it could not be rolled up, unsupported, like a sheet of parchment. It was secure only when it had been carefully wound around a wooden roller, The scribes of Rome and the book copyists of the middle ages preferred vellum. It was preferred by illuminators after printing had been invented. But vellum was never a favorite material among printers. In its dry state, it is harsh, and wears types; it is greasy, and resists ink; in its moistened state, it is flabby, treacherous and unmanageable. The early books on vellum are not so neatly printed as those on paper. But these faults were trivial as compared with the graver fault of inordinate price. When we consider that the skins of more than three hundred sheep were used in every copy of the first printed Bible, it is clear that typography would have been a failure