Six Centuries of Type & Printing

by Glenn Fleishman

Six Centuries of Type & Printing tells the story of the evolution of type and printing. It starts in Asia, before Johann Gutenberg, then takes the reader through generation by generation through increasing sophistication in metal and relief printing and type manufacture. It teaches what made it possible in the 1450s for printing to become a medium of mass reproduction, its stagnation until the 1800s, and the abrupt 20th century shift into flat offset printing and photographic, then digital typesetting and reproduction.

The hardcover volume is bound in green cloth with a debossed, foil-stamped title and spine. The interior paper is a textured stock with black text and illustrations in a second color. The endpapers are printed in black on red.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

The Master Printer: A brief biography of Johann Gutenberg and his ascribed accomplishments; a look back at Chinese and Korean precursors

The Mold That Shapes the World: The importance of a width-adjustable hand mold for casting type

Each Letter, a Work of Art: How type was made through tiny carvings and molds

Mind Your p’s and q’s: Setting metal type by hand

Printing Stands Still; Type Diversifies: The evolution of typefaces even while typecasting and press development stood still

A Bicycle for the Hand: Automating metal type casting

A 19th Century 3D Printer: How electrotyping transformed type design and led to an explosion of faces

A Motor for the Mind: Using a pantograph to produce fine designs and power the future

Type Heats Up Information’s Speed: The mechanization of typesetting in hot lead, with Linotype the winner

Enter the Matrix: Monotype’s hot-metal typesetting system that presaged a future of separating data and output

The Coming of the Light: Phototypesetting breaks the limitations of metal type

PostScript, Ergo Propter Script: Setting type with lasers one line of code at a time

A Press That Lasts Centuries: The persistence of the Gutenberg-style press

Reduce the Pressure: An all-iron-frame press reduces labor on the path to increased throughput

The Need for Speed: Faster presses rely on cylindrical plates spinning past endless feeds of paper

Copy and Paste in Metal: The critical role of printing molds in meeting the demands of newspapers and readers

Painting Images with Ink: A look at the many ways in which images were transformed onto paper

Printing with Light: The fall of metal relief printing and the rise of “flat“ lithographic offset

Paste-Up Is Pasting Down: The transition of page layout from metal to photographic to digital

Coda: Letterpress Abides: Despite the advantages of speed and precision, letterpress as an artistic craft made a resurgence

64 pages, Hardcover

Published July 15, 2025

About the author

I started writing as a child and never stopped. I’ve always been interested in what makes things tick and how to explain that. That led to a career as a technology journalist and how-to article and book author. I’ve written dozens of books over my career in some combination of the two.

In the 2010s, I started publish a series of book that combined printing and type history and technology in a variety of ways. These titles include Not To Put Too Fine a Point on It, a collection of essays and reporting; London Kerning, a look at two magnificent London printing collections and the city’s typographical history; Six Centuries of Type & Printing; and How Comics Were Made, a heavily visual history of the production and reproduction of newspaper comics from the 1890s to the present.

I live in Seattle, Washington, with my family, and drink very little coffee.

Reviews

[Simon MacDonald · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting short book on the history of printing. Obviously the author is quite knowledgeable but it would have been better to have labelled diagrams to go along with the many descriptions of various printing presses.

[H James · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first three-quarters of this book is a clear, terse primer on the subject of printing type. The last quarter is, at least by comparison, a bit of a mess. This is, of course, unfortunate, but it is not far from a deal‐breaker because the first part of the book is so good that it totally justified the purchase price twice over.

[Jérôme Jaglale · Rating 1 out of 5]

So dry. Could not finish.
It could have been amazing with better storytelling and more illustrations/photos.

[Dileepa Karunadasa · Rating 3 out of 5]

A beautifully printed book on a fascinating topic (if you are interested in the history of printing!), however it was a little hard to follow at times.