Typography was invented by consistent
effort to communicate more precisely, and it played an important
role for human culture improvement. Before it was invented, people
had to copy books into books by hand. However, copying books were
not efficient since the original meaning was misunderstood by
losing some parts or making mistakes. In this point, the need for
printing was risen with increased demand by advancement of
knowledge and culture.
Printing was started by wood types. It was bad in that it could
print only one kind even though it took lots of money and time.
Even less efficiently, it was very hard to keep that only one type
well, so it could be easily damaged. To make up for these weak
points, the letterpress printing was invented. The types were made
by carving each word, digit, or symbol in woods and metals or
melting and pouring into woods and metals.
The letterpress printing was more complicated technically than the
wood-block printing in the point of making types and checking
arrangement, but money, time, and the materials could be saved.
Therefore, typography could be developed more fast.
As for saving money and time, it was very economical since the
types were easy to be kept for long time, so the books could be
printed at any time.
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The meaning of the metal type
