Six Centuries of Type & Printing

If you ever wondered how the craft of printing was invented and how it evolved, this book answers that question and many others. Starting with Gutenberg, Six Centuries of Type and Printing traces the development of type design, type manufacture, presses, and printing through the present digital era with many stops along the way. The book explains how many aspects of printing and type remain the same, despite a shift from metal to photography to bits, across almost six centuries of constant improvement. 

You’ll learn about Gutenberg’s unique invention, the type hand mold, and how it pulled all the pieces of contemporary technology together to print one of the still most beautiful books ever published. Six Centuries details how the standard press worked, a fixture from the 1450s to the 1800s, and why development stagnated in many areas. It explains how, in the late 1700s, innovation picked up and never stopped, with new techniques to produce type in massive quantities and print at ever-faster speeds.

The book also covers the modern era, detailing the transition from metal to photographic to digital technologies, which disrupted the lives of printers and the industry again and again. It ends on a cheery note with the reinvigoration of letterpress printing, a craft that nearly died in the digital era, but now is in the midst of a craft renaissance.