Cyclopaedia Of Useful Arts Mechanical And Chemical Manufactures Mining And Engineering Abattoir To Hair Pencils With Introductory Essay On The Great Exhibition Of The Works Of Industry Of All Nations 1851 PDF Download

Excerpt from Cyclopaedia of Useful Arts, Mechanical and Chemical, Manufactures, Mining, and Engineering, Vol. 1: Abattoir to Hair-Pencils; With an Introductory Essay on the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, 1851 Now the great objection to this mode of printing must strike every one. The block that represents a page can print that page only, and nothing else. Suppose it were required by this method to print the Bible. The Latin version, which occupied Gutenberg three years in printing with movable type, contains letters. There are pages, and about letters on a page. Supposing it took an artist a week to cut letters, he would be occupied 70 years, or 70 artists one year, in engraving the blocks required for a complete impression of the Bible. The thing is evidently impossible. Now Gutenbergs idea was this: instead of engraving the letters of a page in one solid block, to engrave a single letter at a time, and having collected a moderate number of such letters, to arrange or compose them into a page, and having worked or printed Off as many impressions of that page as were likely to he wanted, to unlock the page, sort out all the separate letters, and use those very same letters over again in composing or setting up the next page. In this way we get rid of a vast mass of useless engraving and wood cutting. A moderate supply of letters allows a page, or as many pages as there are on one side of a Sheet, to be set up and worked Off; and then the same letters, or type, as they are called, can be used for subsequent pages or sheets, until the work is complete. Should the work not sell, the evil is not of that magnitude as it was when all the pages were engraved oii blocks, for now the same type can be used for other books until it is worn out; and even then it is not useless, for it may be returned to the melting-pot of the type-founder, to be used for casting new type. On the other hand, should there be a large demand for the book, the printer would not object to meet that demand bv setting up the type and working Off the sheets a second tinre. Such was Gutenberg's invention; and simple as it may now appear to us, it was a great invention. It required years for its realisation, and left the man, to whom a statue has been erected, poor and broken-hearted. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.