Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/74

64 occasional allusions to type-making. Considered separately, they are of little importance; considered together, they are ample proof that types were made of fluid metal in moulds and matrices of brass, not less than one hundred years before Amman made his wood-cuts.

In 1507, Ivo Wittig put up a stone to the memory of John Gutenberg, on which he had engraved that Gutenberg was the first to make printing letters in brass. We do not find in any record of authority that Gutenberg printed books by types cut out of brass. There are difficulties connected with the cutting and use of brass types which would make such an assertion incredible. If we accept the literal translation of the Latin epitaph, and supplement it with a little knowledge of type-founding, we shall then understand what Wittig meant—that Gutenberg, by using melted metal, made types in brass moulds.

Trithemius, writing in 1514, observes that Gutenberg and Fust "discovered a method of founding the forms of all the letters, which they called matrices, from which they cast metal types." The statement of the bishop is somewhat confused, and his specification of Fust as an inventor is, probably, incorrect, but every typographer who reads his description cannot fail to see that he has endeavored to describe the established method of making types—the method in use to this day.

Peter Schœffer, in a book printed by him in 1466, makes the book metaphorically say, "I am cast at Mentz." He says the types were cast, although he elsewhere praises himself as a more skillful cutter of letters than Fust or Gutenberg.

Bernard Cennini, writing at Florence in 1471, says that the letters of his book were first cut and then cast.

Nicholas Jenson, who calls himself a cutter of books, says in one of them, published in 1485, that the book, meaning the types of the book, was cut and cast by a divine art.

Husner of Strasburg, in the imprint of a book made by him in 1473, says (translating his language literally) that it was printed "with sculptured letters from brass," or, as it