Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/379

 Books and Science in the Middle Ages 277 in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and was already re- placing parchment before the invention of printing. 461. The Earliest Printed Books. The earliest book of any considerable size to be printed was the Bible, which appears to have been completed at Mayence in the year 1456. A year later the famous Mayence Psalter was finished, the first dated book. There are, however, earlier examples of little books printed with engraved blocks and even with movable types. In the German towns, where the art spread rapidly, the printers adhered to the style of letters which the scribe had found it convenient to make with his quill the so-called Gothic, or black letter. In Italy, however, where the first printing press was set up in 1466,3, type was soon adopted which resembled the letters AN OLD-FASHIONED PRINTING OFFICE Until the nineteenth century printing was carried on with very little machin- ery. The type was hiked by hand, then the paper laid on and the form slipped under a wooden press oper- ated by hand by means of a lever used in ancient Roman in- scriptions. This was quite similar to the style of letter commonly used today. 462. Rapid Spread of Print- ing. By the year 1500, after printing had been used less than half a century, there appear to have been at least forty printing presses to be found in various towns of Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and England. These presses had, it is estimated, already printed eight millions of volumes. So there was no longer any danger of the old books' being lost again, and the encouragement to write and publish new books was greatly increased. From that date our sources for history become far more voluminous than those which exist for