Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal signs=. This certifies that four hundred and fifty copies only, all on hand-made Holland paper and printed from types, of this edition of Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises,” in two volumes, were completed in August, 1896, and that the types have been distributed. _Joseph J. Little._ _S. P. Avery._ _Walter Gilliss._ _Douglas Taylor._ _Theo. L. DeVinne._ _David Williams._ _W. W. Pasko._ _Committee of the Typothetæ._ MOXON’S MECHANICK EXERCISES [Illustration: _The true Effigies of_ Laurenz Ians Kofter _Delineated from his Monumentall Stone Statue, Erected at_ Harlem.] [Illustration: _The true Effigies of_ Iohn Guttemberg _Delineated from the Original Painting at_ Mentz _in Germanie_.] MOXON’S MECHANICK EXERCISES OR THE DOCTRINE OF HANDY-WORKS APPLIED TO THE ART OF PRINTING A LITERAL REPRINT IN TWO VOLUMES OF THE FIRST EDITION PUBLISHED IN THE YEAR 1683 WITH PREFACE AND NOTES BY THEO. L. DE VINNE VOLUME I [Illustration] NEW-YORK THE TYPOTHETÆ OF THE CITY OF NEW-YORK MDCCCLXXXXVI [Illustration] PREFACE JOSEPH MOXON was born at Wakefield in Yorkshire, England, August 8, 1627. There is no published record of his parentage or his early education. His first business was that of a maker and vender of mathematical instruments, in which industry he earned a memorable reputation between the years 1659 and 1683. He was not content with this work, for he had leanings to other branches of the mechanic arts, and especially toward the designing of letters and the making of printing-types. In 1669 he published a sheet in folio under the heading of “Prooves of the Several Sorts of Letters Cast by Joseph Moxon.” The imprint is “Westminster, Printed by Joseph Moxon, in Russell street, at the Sign of the Atlas, 1669.” This specimen of types seems to have been printed, not to show his dexterity as a type-founder, but to advertise himself as a dealer in mathematical and scientific instruments. The reading matter of the sheet describes “Globes Celestial and Terrestrial, Large Maps of the World, A Tutor to Astronomie and to Geographie”—all of his own production. Reed flouts the typography of this sheet: “It is a sorry performance. Only one fount, the Pica, has any pretensions to elegance or regularity. The others are so clumsily cut or badly cast, and so wretchedly printed, as here and there to be almost undecipherable.”[1] The rude workmanship of these early types proves, as he afterward admitted, that he had never been properly taught the art of type-founding; that he had learned it, as he said others had, “of his own genuine inclination.”