g invention came into practical use between A. D. 1440 and
1446.

When, therefore, Johannes Koelhoff of Lubeck, Germany, printed the
"Cologne Chronicle" in 1499, he used individual movable cast-metal
type. Typographic printing had long before superseded Xylographic
printing, that is, printing from a solid block of wood on which type
of an entire page were cut individually by hand.

Between the invention of individual movable cast-metal type and the
perfection by the Earl of Stanhope of his printing-press, (a period of
about three hundred and sixty years), very few improvements had been
made in the mechanics of printing. Everything we know today about the
art has come into use since 1799, and if Koelhoff had come to life in
1799 and been permitted to resume his occupation of printer, he would
have found himself practically familiar with the mechanical equipment
of his craft as used in the establishment of the Stanhope Press in
that last year of the eighteenth century.

Centuries before 1440 printing is believed to have been attempted in
China; presumably about the beginning of the Christian era. It is said
that in the year A. D. 175 the text of the Chinese classics was cut
into tablets which were erected outside the national university at
Peking, and that impressions--probably rubbings--were taken of them.
Some of these fac-simile impressions are still in existence, it is
asserted.

Xylography was also practiced in China long before Europe knew the
art. It can be traced as far back as the sixth century, when the
founder of the Suy dynasty is said to have had the remains of the
Chinese classics engraved on wood, though it was not until the tenth
century that printed books became common in China.

The authorities of the British Museum also report that Chinese writers
give the name of a certain Pi Sheng who, in the eleventh century,
invented movable type, and the Department of Oriental Printed Books
and Manuscripts of the same institution possesses a copy of the Wen
hsien tung Kao, a Chinese encyclopedia printed in Korea from movable
type in A. D. 1337.

To the Koreans also is attributed the invention of copper type in the
beginning of the 15th century, and the inspection of books bearing the
dates of that period seems to show that they used such type, even if
they did not invent them.

The first authentic European printing produced from individual movable
type of which we have any recorded impression, bears the da