Wisconsin School for the Deaf - Tattler Yearbook (Delavan, WI)

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and his brothers went to law to try to make Gutenburg take them into partnership in the dead man’s place. Gutenburg won the suit. In 1446 Gutenburg returned to his hometown of Mainz after having been an exile for more than twenty-five years. All his money was supposed to have gone into his work, and his wife paid the taxes for the same house in which his family used to live, lie borrowed a large sum of money from a merchant of Mainz named John Fust, to get his “tools”, and to purchase other materials for his printing so the printing stock belonged to Fust. They hired a skillful worker in metal named Schoeffer who was able to assist Gutenburg a great deal in carrying out his ideas in making movable type. Gutenburg said that If he wanted a hundred copies of the letter “A ”, he had to carve u hundred copies of the letter in wood. This method was too slow, and moreover, the wooden letters were loo soft, and weak to last. But JSchoefFer had a better idea. This was carving the letter on a piece of metal, and with this metal letter, he punched a mold in a softer metal. Then melted metal was poured into the mold, and copies of the letter were made. After this method had succeeded. Gutenburg determined to print a copy of the Bible. It took a long time to do it, and it was very expensive. It was completed in 1456, and the men agreed that it was “as clear as handwriting”. A great misfortune befell Gutenburg after his hour of triunph. Just when his work on the Bible ended, strife broke out. The wealthy Fust wanted all his money back which he had loaned Gutenburg. He knew that Gutenburg could not pay him after spending much money on publishing the Bible, and perhaps that was why Fust immediately pressed his claim. As Gutenburg was unable to pav it back. Fust seized all the printing plant. Poor Gutenburg was discouraged, but he refused to give up. He found a good friend later on who helped him set up another press from which he printed one or two books. He died in 1468, a poor man. thirteen years after the completion of the great work which made him one of the world’s famous men. Nearly four centuries afterward the citizens in Mainz erected a statue in his honor. Block Printing Geneva L. Broege THE Art of block printing goes back to the Chinese. They invented this about 1400. They had a kind of “printing” which began with the making of seals by pressing carved blocks of wood into soft clay. They pressed sheets of paper over slabs of wood on which designs had been carved and inked. To John Gutenburg of Germany is given credit for the largest part of the invention of movable type and the printing press in

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old copying method, was far from satisfactory, for after a design was used once, it had to be thrown away. As the demand for books had been steadily growing, the time was ripe for an invention to meet this demand. The alphabet had been changed to make it more readable. Those, who were reaching out for different kinds of reading material, had greatly increased in number. Then one day in Germany, a young man was engraving a page of manuscript on a block, when his knife slipped, cutting off a letter which fell to the floor. As he picked it up and looked at it. an idea struck him, why not carve one letter at a time, each on a single little block and put the letters together to make words? Thus was born an idea that was, when developed, to revolutionize the world. The young man was Johann Gutenburg, who was a refugee in Strassburg because he had engaged in a political discussion, opposing officers who were in control of the government in this native city. Mainz. Later, eager to recoup his fortune and, clinging to the possibilitiy of a better way of printing, he carried out and improved upon his original plan, and the invention of movable type was the result. Since printing by his method was made public five hundred years ago, it has carried the twin lights of Christianity and education over a dark and superstitious world. The Life Of Gutenberg By Carola E. Davis ALTHOUGH no one knows the exact year of Johann Gutenburg’s birth, it was probably about 1400. His parents, who resided in Mainz, Germany .were of noble birth, and very healthy. His father’s name was Gensfleisch. but young Johann took the name of Gutenburg in honor of his mother for she was the last of her house. When Johann was about ten years old, his parents had to flee from Mainz . There was a great quarrel between the poor and the rich in that city, and his parents were among the rich. So they were forced to find another home in Strassburg, and this is where the inventor of printing grew to manhood. Several years before he made any attempt to print books, he was engaged in experiments for polishing stones, and making mirrors. Later Gutenburg and a partner began a business of their own, making mirrors, but this venture was not a success. Gutenburg went into another business, that of printing with woodcuts, with three partners including Dritizehn. his former associate. Hut Dritizehn died in 1441 21

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Europe. One of Gutenburg’s Bibles is now in the Library of Congress in Washington. The first American press was set up in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the first half of the seventeenth century. These presses were clumsy, slow-moving and expensive. A wine pres had given Gutenburg the idea for making a machine for printing. Another art is wood block printing. Linoleum block printing is quite new. It started with the discovery of linoleum. The introduction of linoleum block printing gave a new idea for decorating things for the home. Some of the more common uses of this type of printing are for greeting cards, book-covers, prints for framing, letter heads, book plates, place cards, book marks and many others. The linoleum used for block printing is known as “battleship linoleum”. It is made in thicknesses up to one fourth of an inch. It is generally a natural brown, but it can be obtained in almost anv other color. The brown is best for cutting. If the surface of the linoleum is not quite smooth, it may be worked down by using a very fine sandpaper. Linoleum cuts, which are to be printed in a power press or a hand jobber, must be type high, which is 918 thousanths of an inch. The better blocks are made from five ply, laminated wood and three-eighths inch linoleum. It is always wise to select a wel-made block when one wants to print any number of copies. The prints should be dried before handling. They should not be placed in piles as the air can not reach the printed surface. When wet prints are piled up, they will lose their original hardness or thinness and become dirty. Good prints should be framed in plain block frames with clear glass, depending on the nature of the subject. Linoleum cuts can also be used in making plaques. When the cut is finished, it is painted with enamel, oil paint or poster paint and finished with shellac. It may be used as a wall plaque. The older boys of the Wisconsin School for the Deaf have done this type of work in the Art department and also in the printing classes. Paper By Royal W. Eklof THOUGH paper was made by the Chinese long before the Christian era, it was not until the eighth century that the art of paper making was brought to Europe. The spread of this new art was slow, and it was not until the fourteenth century that paper became common just in time to be of great use to Gutenburg’s invention, printing. It is very postponed