This page is referenced by:

• 1 media/PR-INC-00000-A-00007-00002-00888-000-00059.jpg 2023-09-07T13:22:33-07:00 The Early Years of Printing 25 plain 2023-11-07T09:50:04-08:00 The history of printing dates to the mid-15th century, when Johannes Gutenberg began experimenting with movable type. By 1450, he had perfected his printing press. Generally books were printed using one of two methods: block book printing, in which a single wooden block was used to print each page; or typographical book printing, which used individual metal castings for letters.
  
  The earliest printed books generally used type that was designed to mimic scribal handwriting, and it was common to send books to be finished by illuminators, who would add hand painted initials, illuminations, and rubrications. As a result, many early printed books are sometimes difficult to distinguish from manuscripts. Gutenberg, for example, used the Textura quadrata script, which was commonly used in the production of church manuscripts. He created about 300 different types of castings, many of which imitated the ligatures and abbreviations commonly used in religious manuscripts.
  
  While the production of manuscripts and printed books existed side by side during the early decades of printing, the printed book as a vehicle for information quickly overtook the manuscript. By the 1480s, the production of manuscripts was in steep decline. Manuscripts created in the late years of the 15th century were recognized as something unique and special, as representations of pictorial art more than as vehicles for the transmission of text. However, the continued inclusion of illuminations in printed books was a way of bringing the "uniqueness" of manuscripts to a much wider audience.