PRINTING. The art of printing from blocks has been known in China since the middle of the 10th century, and that mode of printing is still practised there. Even in Europe, although writing, unlike that of the Chinese, is alphabetic, printing from blocks was the method first practised. Some have even supposed that the knowledge of the art was originally obtained from China ; but, as far as we can trace, it was not till fully a century after Marco Polo returned from that country that even this simplest kind of printing began to be practised in Europe. It appears to have been first applied to the fabrication of playing cards and manuals of popular devo tion. The sera of these block prints and books, as they are called, may be stated to be the first half of the 15th century : one in Lord Spen cer's collection bears the date of 1423, and there is reason to believe that other specimens were executed almost as late as 1450. Of the block-books of any considerable magnitude the two most remarkable are—the Biblia Pauperam,' a small folio of forty leaves, each containing a picture, with a text of scripture or some other illustrative sentence under it, which is supposed to have been produced some time between 1490 and 1450; and the Speculum Humana; Salvationis,' consisting of sixty-three leaves of the same small folio size, containing in all fifty-eight pictures, with two lines of Latin rhyme under each. With regard however to this last block-book there has been a great deal of disputation, some denying altogether its claim to be reck oned a specimen of block-printing, in so far as the legends are concerned. The proba bility is that at first the ' Speculum' was entirely a block-book, but that in subsequent editions the block-printing was mixed with printing from moveable types. These block books aro, like the Chinese books at this day, printed only on one side of the leaf; and they all appear to have been produced in the Low Countries.
The art of printing, in its essential princi ples the same as now practised, had certainly been discovered before the middle of the 15th century; but when, where, and by whom, each successive improvement of the original pigment-printing by means of engraved blocks was discovered and first put in practice, is not so easily settled. The employment of moveable types, the production of such types by the process of casting them in metal, and the cutting of the punch, or stamp of hardened steel, with which the face of the type is impressed in copper to be afterwards used in the matrix, or mould, in casting—these may be considered as the three great mechanical changes, by which block-printing was trans formed into the art as it now exists.
Four names have principally figured in the controversy that has been raised about the invention of printing :—John Gutenberg (pa ternally Gensileisch), of Strasburg ; John Fust (or Faust), of Mainz ; Peter Schoeffer (in Latin, Opilio), of Gernsheim ; and Law rence Coster (or Janszoon), of Haarlem. The probability is, that Coster was one of the early block-printers, whose art, there is every reason to believe, was first practised in Holland. The use of separate letters, or types, at first of wood and afterwards of metal, and the various improvements in the manner of casting them, are all to be attributed to Gutenberg, Fust, and Schooffer. Gutenberg, it is now generally supposed, first began to print at Strasburg with moveable types of wood some time between 1436 and 1442. Having then established himself in Mainz, which was his native town, he there, in 1445, entered into partnership with Fust, who seems to have assisted Gutenberg in devising or carry ing into effect his subsequent great improve ment of the art, by casting the types .of metal. But to Schoeffer, who was in the service of Gutenberg and Fust, and had married rust's daughter, is assigned the credit of having facilitated and (as far as the prin ciple was concerned) brought to perfection the process of founding by the contrivance of the punch. The knowledge of the art was first made public and carried into other countries by the dispersion of many of the workmen on the storming of Mainz by Adol phus of Nassau, in 1482. Printing was first practised in Italy, in the town of Subiaco, in the Roman territory, in 1465; in France, at Paris, in 1489 ; in England, at Westminster, in 1474; and in Spain, at Barcelona, in 1475. It is said that by the year 1530 there were already about 200 printing-presses in Europe. The name of William Caxton is indissolubly connected with the introduction of printing into England.