Evidence for Ancient Movable Type Printing

[Eleatic Guest]

This is nothing less but a sensational finding, and yet largely ignored for over a century. I admit, being a non-native speaker, I still don't quite grasp all details of the technical description, but it is evident that it is of paramount importance for the early history (or pre-history) of printing.

In an nutshell, it has been found that inscriptions on Roman lead pipes were produced by movable and re-usable types. The discovery dates to the 1880s and yet is has been so far almost completely ignored by historians of printing. I post the complete paragraph of A.T. Hodge: Roman Aqueducts and Water Supply (1992), pp. 310f., the English-language standard reference to Roman aqueducts.

It was at this stage in the manufacture that the pipes acquired their inscriptions. Not every length of pipe had one, but they are not uncommon. Normally they are formed by letters raised in relief on the pipe, as opposed to being stamped, engraved, or scratched. The procedure utilised a series of individual movable moulds for the various letters. What happened next depended on whether the lead was being run out on to a sand or a stone surface. If it was sand, the letters were simply impressed into it, perhaps one at a time, or assembled into some sort of stamp. The inscription thus now formed part of the mould. On a stone surface, the letters would have to be assembled into the desired inscription, more or less on the principles of modern typographical composition, and the whole locked into a slot in the stone slab, so that the typeface was flush with its surface. When the liquid lead was run in on to the slab to form the lead sheet, it of course also ran into the type moulds, solidifying in the form of a raised inscription. That the types were movable, and re-usable, is shown by irregularities in their spacing and alignment, recalling those sometimes occurring on a modern typewriter. 22 There is no denying the stature of this technological feat. As with the Phaestos Disc of an earlier age, in which an inscription was imprinted in clay by movable types, it tempts one into speculating how close the ancient world was to making the full-scale breakthrough into printing. Nor can there be any real doubt that that was how it was done. Normal inscriptions, engraved, painted or stamped, do not produce raised lettering. That can only be done by moulding, at the time the pipe (or the lead sheet forming it) is being made, so that as the pipes were mass produced, so were the inscriptions.

Footnote 22: Pace 78. The identification of this primitive printing system was due to Lanciani (R. Lanciani, I Commentari di Frontino Intorno le Acque e gli Acquedotti (Rome, 1881),416: 'ogniqualvolta occorre nella leggenda la linea di cesura la lettera o le lettere sulle quali corre la linea sono piu piccole; e cib per l'impossibilita 0 almeno per la difficolta di varcare il margine della cassa').

Now, could you explain to me how close this method of assembling types and printing with them was to Gutenberg's later invention of movable type? I would like to read a second expert opinion on this, was the topic ever addressed by other authors?

[caiusbeerquitius]

Since you are just reading this book I assume we meet next thursday in MUC?

[Jona Lendering]

It is interesting, certainly; but it does not appear to have been influential. Like that Alexandrine steam engine, the circumnavigation of Africa, or the discovery of the zero, the ancients did not give it a follow-up that would have made it really important. Compare it to the Viking settlements in Canada: interesting, certainly, but it was the discovery by Columbus that changed history.

Often, the ancients came close to a breakthrough, but social circumstances did not favor innovation. For every Gyro Gearloose, there was a Vespasian who said that his slaves needed work as well, and prevented the rise of novel technologies.

That being said, I am glad to have read this!

[D B Campbell]

... Normally they are formed by letters raised in relief on the pipe, as opposed to being stamped, engraved, or scratched. ...

Very interesting, Stefan. It was my impression that lead pipes were engraved, just like regular inscriptions. (I've no idea how this was achieved -- hammer and chisel?)

[attachment=0:1mcxhdy4]<!-- ia0 LeadPipe_Chester.jpg<!-- ia0 [/attachment:1mcxhdy4]

Does anyone have an example of "raised type" pipes?

[Eleatic Guest]

It is interesting, certainly; but it does not appear to have been influential. Like that Alexandrine steam engine, the circumnavigation of Africa, or the discovery of the zero, the ancients did not give it a follow-up that would have made it really important. Compare it to the Viking settlements in Canada: interesting, certainly, but it was the discovery by Columbus that changed history.

You are right, of course. This invention had not much of an impact on history, because if it had, it would not have been news to us.

Still, this is not only about the Golden Pineapple. If Hodge's interpretation is correct, then the raised lead inscriptions constitute the earliest evidence for movable type. Many scholars are disclined to call the Phaistos Disc an example of movable type, on the grounds that its symbols were apparently stamped in a sequence one by one. For being a print, the creator should have taken all necessary stamps in his hand and imprinted the whole disc in one move, thus making the stamps true movable type.

This is the case with these Roman leaden pipes. Here the inscription must have been imprintedall at once as a set of letters, because once the lead layer covered the moulds, there was obviously no chance anymore of adding or changing the letters below. That means that the Romans should get at least a honourable award for devising the first movable type, even though it never made it to book printing.

Does anyone have an example of "raised type" pipes?

I would love to have a pic. Which authorities could we possibly turn to, a curator of some museum for ancient / Roman history?

[A_Volpe]

sticking my neck out and splitting hairs as a printmaker and print-nerd

but the lead-pipe thing to me just reads as a movable MOLD, and not a printing press. Two widely different mechanisms as far as I'm concerned.

If these were pieces of lead with letters on them used to print paper, THEN we'd be talking one heckuva find.

But stamping words/labels onto lead pipe molds is not the same as pressing paper onto inked type.

that's my tres denarii :?

[Sean Manning]

That is an interesting fact! But as Jona says, there's a difference between using a technique in one specialized field and making it common. Unless anyone finds something intermediate, it doesn't look like this had any connection to the later invention of movable type. I agree it does belong in the histories with other early printing.

Dudicus the printmaker can correct me, but I think that to print a whole page the ancients would have needed an ink which doesn't smudge easily (I think ancient inks were all water-based and good printer's inks tended to be oil-based) and a machine to do the pressing.

[Eleatic Guest]

sticking my neck out and splitting hairs as a printmaker and print-nerd

but the lead-pipe thing to me just reads as a movable MOLD, and not a printing press. Two widely different mechanisms as far as I'm concerned.

If these were pieces of lead with letters on them used to print paper, THEN we'd be talking one heckuva find.

But stamping words/labels onto lead pipe molds is not the same as pressing paper onto inked type.

that's my tres denarii :?

I don't have any practical experience with printing, but I think we need to distinguish two things from each other.

1. A printing press and movable type are two different things. This is only about the latter. A press, the most conspicuous instrument of mechanical printing, is no necessary condition for movable type printing. It can also be done by manually rubbing paper, papyrus, vellum, etc. onto the arranged set of letters as was long done in the Far East.

2. Printing does neither necessarily mean book printing nor printing on paper. You can also print on vellum, glass, cloth and ...lead. In fact, (woodblock) printing of images on clothes is far older than (woodblock) printing of text on paper, the earliest evidence in the Roman Empire dating to Coptic Egypt (4th century AD).

Here, we are only concerned with the technique of movable type printing. Neither with its mechanization by the printing press and nor its use as book printing which were obviously historically very close to the movable type printing process, but which are from a technological point of view unconnected.

And from what I take, the fact that the moulds
a) must have been arranged as a set forming words and sentences and
b) were re-used
follows that this is nothing less than movable type printing. Please correct me if I am wrong.

[Eleatic Guest]

That is an interesting fact! But as Jona says, there's a difference between using a technique in one specialized field and making it common.

True, but within this specialized field the movable type technique may well be very widespread. Read the last sentence: "That can only be done by moulding, at the time the pipe (or the lead sheet forming it) is being made, so that as the pipes were mass produced, so were the inscriptions."

Even if only every tenth pipe was imprinted (the others either unmarked or engraved, scratched, etc.), we are talking about tens of thousand possible cases, given that each piece of pipe was 10 Roman feet (ca. 3 m) and that Roman aqueducts, 90% of which were underground, often measured dozens of kilometers.

[D B Campbell]

Does anyone have an example of "raised type" pipes?

I would love to have a pic. Which authorities could we possibly turn to, a curator of some museum for ancient / Roman history?

At last, I have found an example (CIL XV, 7285):

The raised lettering suggests (to me) that it was punched into the lead sheet before it was made into a pipe. But to demonstrate Hodge's proposed use of movable type, we would need to see the inside of the pipe, which should be smooth if he is correct. Otherwise, I suspect that it was simply a punch or stamp, as in ceramic tile manufacture.

(Thanks for raising the subject, Stefan. I had only ever seen "engraved" lead pipes, which must involve a different process.)

[Eleatic Guest]

Did Cicero actually say this? In which of his books?

[url:16cpgdb6]http://books.google.com/books?id=gSIDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA584&dq=%22movable+type%22+Romans&hl=de#v=onepage&q=%22movable%20type%22%20Romans&f=false[/url] (p. 584, first paragraph)

[SigniferOne]

Wow this is a highly interesting discussion!

I do accept that it was quite likely an embossed movable pipe, rather than movable type, so as to not get ourselves too over-excited :lol:

[Epictetus]

Stefan – yes, Cicero says this.

Is it possible for any man to behold these things, and yet imagine that certain solid and individual bodies move by their natural force and gravitation, and that a world so beautifully adorned was made by their fortuitous concourse? He who believes this may as well believe that if a great quantity of the one-and-twenty letters, composed either of gold or any other matter, were thrown upon the ground, they would fall into such order as legibly to form the Annals of Ennius. I doubt whether fortune could make a single verse of them. How, therefore, can these people assert that the world was made by the fortuitous concourse of atoms, which have no color, no quality--which the Greeks call [Greek: poiotês], no sense? or that there are innumerable worlds, some rising and some perishing, in every moment of time? But if a concourse of atoms can make a world, why not a porch, a temple, a house, a city, which are works of less labor and difficulty?

Cicero, The Nature of the gods, 2.37

For the life of me, I can’t see how this talks about movable type, though. To me it looks more like he is talking about their concept of atoms, which was fairly common among the writings of philosophers and thinkers in this era. Maybe this Lacroix that is cited explains his reasoning?

[Eleatic Guest]

For the life of me, I can’t see how this talks about movable type, though. To me it looks more like he is talking about their concept of atoms, which was fairly common among the writings of philosophers and thinkers in this era. Maybe this Lacroix that is cited explains his reasoning?

To me its sounds at least like a vague allusion to the underlying principle of movable type:

1) Create one type for each letter
2) Form a text by individually assembling them

[D B Campbell]

To me its sounds at least like a vague allusion to the underlying principle of movable type:

Hmmm ... not sure. Remember that the ancients were aware of the concept of individual letters forming a message -- viz., the brass or bronze inscriptions that survive as patterns of holes in the stone, where the individual letters were attached. From time to time, Cicero might have seen artisans at work on this kind of inscription, so he could simply be thinking of these kinds of letters, rather than movable type.

(I still think the raised pipe inscriptions were just stamped from behind! :wink: )