The shift from script to print in early modern communications was both dramatic and gradual. The invention of printing from movable type did produce many more books and led to a steep decline in the production of manuscripts by about 1475. Still, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, three or four hundred years after the introduction of movable type, manuscript was a legitimate form of publication in every field of scientific and literary endeavor. And while official communications from the political and religious spheres more and more began to take printed form, a lively network of clandestine manuscript production allowed unorthodox ideas to circulate outside the purview of the censors. Only by the turn of the nineteenth century did book production begin to assume its modern form. Then, the "typographical old regime," as the previous system is sometimes called, began to be replaced by the structure of an industry, divided into creative, editorial, and publishing sectors, that would emerge during the course of the century as capable of reaching the first mass audiences. Before then, individual entrepreneurs operated myriad relatively small firms in all the major cities without significant legal protection and under a regime of more or less strict political and ecclesiastical control. In spite of these conditions, printing and publishing exercised a profound influence on religious, intellectual, and political life wherever it flourished.

TECHNOLOGY AND MATERIALS

In the generation following Johannes Gutenberg, whose "forty-two-line Bible" was probably completed around 1455, the industry had already begun to take on the features that would characterize it for the next three and a half centuries. A typical operation, under the direction of a master printer, eventually included a compositor who was responsible for composing and justifying the lines of characters in his composing stick. He then tied up the page (i.e., the lead necessary to print a page) and imposed the pages of a sheet, situating the pages of lead so that the sheets would be printed correctly, with the chase and furniture around them, made up a form, and fixed the signatures so the sheets could be folded in an orderly succession when printed. A pressman and his companion were engaged in the actual printing of pages—one was responsible for inking the forms with leather ink balls while the other placed the wet paper upon the tympan, turned the frisket down, moved the carriage in for the correct positioning of the platen, and then pulled the bar two times on one side of a sheet. The whole print run was repeated on the other side for perfecting the sheets. A corrector read proof in the lead characters and then sent his corrections back to the compositor, who reopened the form and reworked the lines. Sixteenth-century printers and publishers formed into guilds, which eventually sought to set standards for the quality of the product and the payment of workers, while governing relations between firms.

DIFFUSION OF PRINTING

From Gutenberg's operation in Mainz, whether by emigration of personnel or by emulation of technique, the industry soon spread. If Cologne, at least for sheer number of editions, soon emerged as one of the greatest centers in Germany, beginning with the shop of Ulrich Zell (d. 1507), powerful rivals soon appeared across the Rhine. The lure of scholarly publishing may well have inspired Guillaume Fichet and Johann Heynlin to organize production in Paris in 1470; the presence of a commercial fair eventually made Lyon the second printing center of France, beginning with Barthélemy Buyer in 1473. In Westminster, William Caxton brought his experience on the Continent to bear on the project for an English press in 1476. Between 1465 and 1466 the first shops in Italy were opened in Subiaco outside Rome (Konrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz) and in Rome itself (Ulrich Han). Three years later the debut of Johannes de Spira began the rise of Venice, which in the age of Aldus Manutius (c. 1450–1515) and the Gioliti family of the sixteenth century established its place as the undisputed leader among the 250 or so cities and towns where printing now existed.

By the second half of the sixteenth century, the printing epicenter of Europe began to shift northward. With twenty-four presses and over a hundred workers at the height of his activity, Christophe Plantin (1514–1589), who had offices in Antwerp, Leiden, and Paris, ran the largest printing firm of his age, occupied by, among other commitments, official work for the monarchy of King Philip II of Spain. With a complete type foundry attached to the printing operation, the firm was able to produce 2,450 editions in thirty-four years of activity. A former employee of Plantin, Louis Elzevier (1540–1617), subsequently dominated the market in Leiden.