Note 331 — XXIII

The description of the more ingenious method of “founding the forms of all the letters of the Latin alphabet, which they called matrices, from which [matrices] they again founded types, either in tin or in brass,” has been denounced by many writers on typography as the confused statement of a man who did not thoroughly understand what he related, and who has reversed the proper order of the process of type-making. A more careful reading will show that Trithemius attempted to describe the process of matrix-making, which is set forth in page 302 of this book. He says the types were made either of brass or of tin, for his memory failed him, and he could not recollect that it was the matrix which should have been of brass, and the type of tin. The characters “which before this had been cut by hand” may be regarded not as types, but as punches of soft metal. They would necessarily be damaged by pressure in the semi-fluid metal selected for making the matrices. The tools which Trithemius vainly tried to describe were the punch of steel and the mould and matrices of brass. That punches and matrices of wood or of soft metal unequal to hard pressure were used by the earlier printers is proved by the variable shapes of their types.