Note 152 — XV

This apparently easy method of demonstrating the practicability of types of wood has been attempted by many writers. Wetter, the author of a valuable history of printing, published in his book a page printed from types of wood, which he offered as conclusive evidence that types of wood could have been made and were made by the early printers. But his types of wood are larger than those of the Speculum, and they are also provided with leads to keep them in line. Notwithstanding these precautions, they are more out of line than the types of the Speculum. Meerman, in his Origines Typographicæ, printed a few words from types of wood with a similar result; but he showed a practical disbelief in his own theory, by engraving all the fac-similes of the alleged types of wood upon plates of copper. The substitution of copper for wood was, virtually, an acknowledgment of the impracticability of wood types. Schinkel, a Dutch printer, was more successful than either Meerman or Wetter in obtaining a good impression from small types of wood, but he subsequently admitted that his success was but a trick, and that it did not prove that they could be used in the ordinary practice of printing. Léon De la Borde afterward conceded that types of wood would be impracticable.