So everything in the world that Gutenberg had, even
the tools with which he worked, came into Fust's possession.
II
But though he had lost his tools, Gutenberg had not lost his courage.
And he had not lost all his friends. One of them had money, and he
bought Gutenberg a new set of tools and hired a workshop for him.
And now at last Gutenberg's hopes were fulfilled. First of all it
is thought that he made types of hard wood. Each type was a little
block with a single letter at one end. Such types were a great
deal better than block letters. The block letters were fixed.
They could not be taken out of the words of which they were parts.
The new types were movable so they could be set up to print one
page, then taken apart and set up again and again to print any
number of pages.
But type made of wood did not always print the letters clearly and
distinctly, so Gutenberg gave up wood types and tried metal types.
Soon a Latin Bible was printed. It was in two volumes, each of
which had three hundred pages, while each of the pages had forty-two
lines. The letters were sharp and clear. They had been printed
from movable types of metal.
Pages:
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213