The Assyrians not only inscribed their records upon cylinders of soft clay by pressing a sharp stick into them to make the curious wedge-shaped characters of their alphabet, but it is evident that they carved rather long inscriptions on plates, probably of wood, and transferred these to bricks by pressure. The illustration shows an Assyrian stamped brick of this sort. Wherever we touch the history of civilized man we find some form of printing by the use of a seal, a stamp, or even a single letter. Some manuscripts long before the middle of the fifteenth century seem to have had the initial letters put in by means of stamps which were applied either by heavy hand pressure or by the blow of a mallet. These initial letters certainly show the use of color in making the impression. It is probable that such use of color was early thought of as a means of making the impression of the seal more distinct and dispensing with the pressure necessary to force the seal into the substance of the parchment, papyrus, or paper which was being used. Thus through the ages we slowly grow toward a more varied and extensive use of these primitive methods of printing. If we turn to Asia we find that the Chinese and their neighbors, the Japanese and the Coreans, anticipated Europe by many centuries in printing, as well as in other arts. The Chinese appear to have hit upon the device of multiplying books by cutting all the characters needed for a page on a block of wood and then applying the inked block to the paper as early as the sixth century, A. D. Books printed by this process, generally known as block books, were common among the Chinese as early as the tenth century. The Japanese were using blocks for printing before the year 800, A. D. The British Museum contains a Corean book apparently printed from movable types which is supposed to date as far back as 1338.