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The technical term for the relief printing from a raised surface that originated in the Orient. Typography is the term for printing through the use of independent, movable, and reusable bits of metal, each of which has a raised letterform on its top. This dry definition belies the immense potential for human dialogue and the new horizons for graphic design, that were unleashed by this extraordinary invention in the mid-1400's by a restless German experimenter whose portrait and signature are lost to the relentless passage of time. Some historians have declared the invention of typography to be the most important advance in civilisation after the creation of writing. Writing gave the human family a means of storing, retrieving, and documenting knowledge and information that transcended time and place. Typographic printing allowed the economical and multiple production of alphabet communication. Knowledge spread rapidly, and literacy increased as a result of this remarkable invention. Several factors created a climate in Europe that made typography feasible. The demand for books had become insatiable as Europe was slowly aroused from the medieval era into the Renaissance. The emerging literate middle class and students in the rapidly expanding universities had snatched the monopoly on literacy from the clergy, creating a vast new market for reading material. The slow and expensive process of bookmaking had changed little in one thousand years. A simple two-hundred page book required four or five months' labor by a scribe, and the twenty-five sheepskins needed for the parchment were even more expensive than his labor. In 1424 the university at Cambridge had only one hundred twenty-two manuscript books in its library, and the library of a wealthy nobleman whose books were his most prized and sought-after possessions would probably number less than two dozen volumes.
The technical term for the relief printing from a raised surface that originated in the Orient. Typography is the term for printing through the use of independent, movable, and reusable bits of metal, each of which has a raised letterform on its top. This dry definition belies the immense potential for human dialogue and the new horizons for graphic design, that were unleashed by this extraordinary invention in the mid-1400's by a restless German experimenter whose portrait and signature are lost to the relentless passage of time. Some historians have declared the invention of typography to be the most important advance in civilisation after the creation of writing. Writing gave the human family a means of storing, retrieving, and documenting knowledge and information that transcended time and place. Typographic printing allowed the economical and multiple production of alphabet communication. Knowledge spread rapidly, and literacy increased as a result of this remarkable invention. Several factors created a climate in Europe that made typography feasible. The demand for books had become insatiable as Europe was slowly aroused from the medieval era into the Renaissance. The emerging literate middle class and students in the rapidly expanding universities had snatched the monopoly on literacy from the clergy, creating a vast new market for reading material. The slow and expensive process of bookmaking had changed little in one thousand years. A simple two-hundred page book required four or five months' labor by a scribe, and the twenty-five sheepskins needed for the parchment were even more expensive than his labor. In 1424 the university at Cambridge had only one hundred twenty-two manuscript books in its library, and the library of a wealthy nobleman whose books were his most prized and sought-after possessions would probably number less than two dozen volumes.
