Facts about Movable Type Printing
- 09
Typographical spacing in movable type printing required lead and copper spacers called furniture, which printers had to hand-fit between characters to achieve proper page margins and justified text alignment.
- 08
Movable type characters required regular replacement due to wear, forcing printers to cast thousands of duplicate letters throughout a font's lifetime to maintain print quality.
- 07
By the 16th century, master printers across Europe had standardized movable type into point sizes, with the largest display fonts reaching approximately 72 points or roughly 1 inch in height.
- 06
Printing ink formulation for movable type required oil-based mixtures rather than water-based inks used in woodblock printing, necessitating entirely new manufacturing techniques in 15th-century Europe.
- 05
Movable type printing required specialized metalworking skills, as Gutenberg's craftsmen had to achieve consistent character heights of approximately 2.5 centimeters to ensure even pressure during the printing process.
- 04
A single page printed with movable type required repositioning thousands of individual characters by hand, making early printing labor-intensive despite revolutionary speed advantages over manuscript copying.
- 03
Korean printers adapted movable type technology in the 13th century, producing the Jikji in 1377, the world's oldest surviving book printed with metal movable type.
- 02
Gutenberg's printing press of 1440 used approximately 290 metal characters per font, requiring craftsmen to individually cast each letter in steel molds.
- 01
In 1040 CE, Bi Sheng invented movable type printing using ceramic characters in China, centuries before Gutenberg's metal type press in 1440.