Famous Men of the Middle AgesHaaren, John H. (John Henry)
History
Famous Men of the Middle Ages
Haaren, John H. (John Henry)
Europe -- Biography; Europe -- History -- 476-1492
First of all it is thought that he made types of hard wood. Each
type was a little block with a single letter at one end. Such types
were a great deal better than block letters. The block letters
were fixed. They could not be taken out of the words of which they
were parts. The new types were movable so they could be set up to
print one page, then taken apart and set up again and again to
print any number of pages.
But type made of wood did not always print the letters clearly and
distinctly, so Gutenberg gave up wood types and tried metal types.
Soon a Latin Bible was printed. It was in two volumes, each of which
had three hundred pages, while each of the pages had forty-two
lines. The letters were sharp and clear. They had been printed from
movable types of metal.
III
The Dutch claim that Lorenz Coster, a native of Harlem, in the
Netherlands, was the first person who printed with movable type.
They say that Coster was one day taking a walk in a beech forest
not far from Harlem, and that he cut bark from one of the trees
and shaped it with his knife into letters.
Not long after this the Dutch say Coster had made movable types
and was printing and selling books in Harlem.
The news that books were being printed in Mainz by Gutenberg went
all over Europe, and before he died printing-presses like his were
at work making books in all the great cities of the continent.
About twenty years after his death, when Venice was the richest
of European cities, a man named Al'-dus Ma-nu'tius established
there the most famous printing house of that time. He was at work
printing books two years before Columbus sailed on his first voyage.
The descendents of Aldus continued the business after his death for
about one hundred years. The books published by them were called
"Aldine," from Aldus. They were the most beautiful that had ever
come from the press. They are admired and valued to this day.
WARWICK THE KINGMAKER
LIVED FROM 1428-1471
I
The earl of Warwick, known as the "kingmaker," was the most famous
man in England for many years after the death of Henry V. He lived
in a great castle with two towers higher than most church spires.
It is one of the handsomest dwellings in the world and is visited
every year by thousands of people. The kingmaker had a guard of
six hundred men. At his house in London meals were served to so
many people that six fat oxen were eaten at breakfast alone. He
had a hundred and ten estates in different parts of England and
no less than 30,000 persons were fed daily at his board. He owned
the whole city of Worcester, and besides this and three islands,
Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney, so famed in our time for their cattle,
belonged to him.
He had a cousin of whom he was as fond as if he were a brother.
This was Richard, duke of York, who was also own cousin to King
Henry VI, the son of Henry V.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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