Printing is the technique of impressing on paper the forms of letters from moveable type cast in a mould. It is also called the art of typography which is an excellent term. Let us proceed to the matter.

Printing , that art which so favours the advancement of the Sciences, which increase in perfection as the amount of knowledge increases, was invented about the middle of the fifteenth century at about the time when engraving  [1] became known; but the Romans would have had only one step to take to have had the glory  [2] [of this invention].

Those who have written on the subject agree in fixing the beginning of age of print about the year 1440 and of giving to the town of Mainz the honour of seeing its birth. Harlem, which claims this honour, has its partisans, Boxhorn among others. Finally, the town of Strasbourg has its supporters, in particular MM Mentel and Schefflin.

However, if one is impartial, it is hardly possible to doubt that Guttenberg was truly the creator of printing . He was a native of Mainz, from a patrician family there which seems to have been known by different names, Zumjungen-aben and Gensfleisch. In the contracts agreed in Strasbourg in 1441 and 1442 he is named as Joannes called Gensfleisch , also known as Guttenberg of Mainz  [3].

It is certain that, in Strasbourg in 1439, Guttenberg made an agreement with three burgesses of that city to exploit several arts and marvellous secrets with prodigious promise. These were, M. Schefflin asserts, the terms of the agreement (written in German) but without specifying what constituted these arts; however, one may suppose that the art of printing was among those secrets described as marvellous .

Indeed, at first, the invention of printing was regarded as a prodigy, and even as sorcery. The contracting parties did not judge it expedient to explain themselves more clearly in the hope of gaining considerable profit from an art for which there was not even yet a name.

In 1450 Guttenberg was in Mainz seeking friends to remedy his exhausted funds and, in this year, he formed a new alliance with Faust of Mainz. It is for this reason that Peter Schoeffer, associate and son in law of Faust, dated the beginning of printing in Mainz to the year 1450.

In 1452, the same Peter Schoeffer, a servant of Faust, discovered the method of casting letters and thus brought printing to perfection for, until then, Guttenberg and Faust printed with letters carved in relief on wood or metal. The perfection of printing required moveable cast letters and it was this that Schoeffer achieved.

In 1465 the Elector Adolph II of Mainz condescended to honour Guttenberg and make his fortune and received him into the company of gentlemen of his household with an appropriate pension. But Guttenberg did not enjoy these benefits for long; he died three years later in Mainz in 1468 and was buried in the Franciscan church of that city.

I shall go no further here into the details of the lives of the three men who first printed books and I shall say nothing about the technique of printing. [For the latter] see the article Printing.

Let me add only that those who are ignorant of the essential basis of this admirable art have regarded its beginning either as the invention of engraved wood blocks or of fixed letters when it is quite clear that the true basis of printing is the invention of moveable type, cut in relief and cast [in metal]. Thus, if the use of mobile type forms the basis of printing it is neither the Chinese - who print in roughly the way that we print images today – nor the people of Harlem whose claim has no basis beyond [carved] wooden blocks – who are entitled to the honour of printing’s invention. The speculum humanæ salvationis jealously preserved in their city [Harlem] as incontestable proof of the invention of printing there by Laurent Coster, proves nothing. Several works of this type, preserved by collectors, are printed using this type of engraving  [4].

It is known that printing was spread after 1462 by the revolution that Mainz experienced that year. Adolph Count of Nassau, supported by the pope Pius II in a surprise attack on the imperial city, removed its liberties and privileges. Hence all the craftsmen from the city, with the exception of Guttenberg, fled, became dispersed and carried their art into places and countries in which it was then unknown. It is because of this event that all the historians agree on John Schoeffer, son of Peter and grandson of Faust as the originator, and this dispersion as the beginning [of the spread of printing] from which Europe benefitted.

In fact, through the dispersion, the craftsmen of Mainz took their industry into all parts. Udalric, Han, Suvenheim and Arnold Pannarts went to Rome where they were accommodated in the palace of the Massimos  [5]. There, in 1467, they printed St Augustine’s City of God, a Latin Bible, the Offices of Cicero and several other books. In 1468 we see a printed work appear from England. In Venice, Jean de Spire and Vandelein published the letters of St. Cyprien in 1471. In the same year, Sixtus Rufinger published several religious works in Naples. In Milan Phillipe de Lavagna brought out a Suetonius in 1475.

In Paris, Ulric Gering, Martin Grantz and Michel Fribulger began printing in a room in the buildings of the Sorbonne and four years later Pierre Maufer, a native of Rouen, published Alberti Magni de lapidibus & mineralibus  [6] in that city.

In Strasbourg, according to Gebweile and de Wimphelinge, Jean de Cologne and Jean Mentheim became famous for their casting of type and were succeeded by Henri Eggestein.

The pandectes medicinales of Matthaeus Sylvaticus appeared in Lyon in 1478 and, in Geneva, the same year, a treatise on angels by Cardinal Ximenès.

Two volumes in folio of St. Augustine’s City of God appeared in Abbeville in 1486 in the translation of 1375 by Raoul de Presles. This was the first, and perhaps the only, book printed in this town.

John of Westphalia, at Louvin, published Petrus Crescentius de agriculturâ . In 1489 Gérard Leeuw published the ars epistolaris Francisci Nigri at Antwerp and Richard Pasraer printed the itinerarium of Johannis de Hese at Deventer.

Finally, as far afield as Seville, Paul de Cologne and his associates, all of them Germans, published a Floretum St. Matthoei in 1491.

During the same period, Jean Amerbach had some good works printed in Basle in perfect round characters. But, ten years earlier, Italy had produced valuable editions in Greek characters. Milan, Venice and Florence had this honour.

Thus, by means of printing, there came about rapidly not only the multiplication of knowledge but also the preservation and transmission until the end of time of the thoughts of men whose bodies had long become merged into Nature and their souls departed to the realm of the spirits.

All other arts that serve to perpetuate our ideas perish in the long run. Statues in the end fall to powder. Buildings last less long than statues, and colours persist even less long. Michelangelo, Fontana and Raphael are [to painting] what Phidias, Vitruvius and Apelles were to sculpture; and the works of the latter are no longer extant.

The advantage of authors over these grand masters is that we are able to multiply [copies of] their writings by printing, by renewing unceasingly the numbers of copies as we wish without these copies being less valuable than the originals.

What would be the price of a Virgil, a Horace, a Homer, a Cicero, of an Aristotle or a Pliny, if their works were confined to a single location, or were in the hands of only one person - as a statue or a building or a picture must be?

Thus it is thanks to the fair art of printing that men’s thoughts are expressed in works that may last as long as the sun endures and will be lost only in the final dissolution of the universe. The inimitable works of Virgil and Homer will perish only with the world when it falls in on our heads.

Thus, since books pass down from century to century, with what care should authors use their talent to [produce] works that help human nature towards perfection? If we as individuals are unable do anything worth writing about, says Pliny the Younger, let us strive at least to write about something worth reading.

Those eager for detailed discussion of the origins of Printing and its inventors can find what they seek in Baillet, Chevillier, la Caille, Mallinkroot, Mentel, Pancirolle, Polydor Virgil de rerum inventoribus , Michael Mayer verba Germanorum inventa , Almeloveen de novis inventis, the Philosophical Transactions  [7] etc. and Schefflin or Fournier.

But those whose interest is in becoming acquainted with the earliest and the best editions of books of all kinds must turn over, pen in hand, the pages of the Bibliothèque de Fabricius and the annals of typography of Maittaire. This study forms a branch of learning much admired in countries abroad and about which I do not regret my former attachment. It is particularly indispensible to royal librarians and to libraries who seek to acquire rare books or to undertake the task of cataloguing them.

1. This probably refers to the occasional, sporadic and generally isolated instances of the use of prints from engraved copper plates to illustrate printed books which did, indeed, begin in the fifteenth century but was then abandoned until its definitive revival in the middle of the sixteenth century. The use of engraving on metal as decoration, for example on jewellery, is, of course very much more ancient than the fifteenth century AD.

2. This extraordinary claim seems to arise from the fact that the eighteenth century knew that the techniques of casting in metals were practised in classical times.

3. Joannes dictus Gensfleisch, aliàs nuncupatus Guttenberg, de Moguntia

4. That is, printing from wood blocks with the entire content of each page cut on a separate block which can, of course, serve only to ‘print’ that particular page.

5. Probably the Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne destroyed in the Sack of Rome in 1527 and rebuilt thereafter.

6. ‘Of stones and minerals’ by Albertus Magnus.

7. Perhaps the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London ?