The press in use was of the most simple form imaginable, as shown by the accompanying illustration. It was an adaptation of a familiar mechanical device, with no originality about it. It was made of wood and was operated by a screw turning through a nut, the moving of the screw bringing the platen and bed into contact. The form was released by the reverse movement of the screw. After a while the sliding bed and frisket shown in the accompanying illustration were introduced and there the mechanism stopped for a long time. [Illustration: Bed of Hand Press Showing Tympan and Frisket] The first twenty-five years or so of printing have been described as a period of stagnation. They have also been described as the period of the workman. Apparently the vast possibilities of the new art were slow in obtaining recognition. The earliest printers were only mechanics. They had not yet got the vision of combining scholarship with their art and so unlocking the treasuries of the world to mankind generally, still less that of adding to the sum total of human knowledge. They had found out an art by which manuscripts could be rapidly produced and money made by their sale, and that was all. They contented themselves with a slavish imitation of manuscripts, with apparently no thought of their being anything more than manuscript imitators. This condition of things, however, could not last long. It was inevitable that the scholars of the world should become interested in this new process and should begin to see its advantages. After twenty or twenty-five years of printing this took place. The period of sluggish and practically dormant infancy passed and the development of the art began, as we shall see in the next volume of this series, No. 51, A Short History of Printing, Part I. SUPPLEMENTARY READING THE STORY OF BOOKS. By Gertrude Burford Rawlings. McClure, Phillips & Co., New York. THE INVENTION OF PRINTING. By Thedore L. De Vinne. Oswald Publishing Co., New York. HAARLEM, NOT MAINZ. By J. H. Hesels. EARLY PRINTED BOOKS. By E. Gordon Duff. BOOKS AND THEIR MAKERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES. Vol. I. by George Haven Putnam. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York. ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA. Eleventh Edition. Article on Typography. Pupils who have access to large libraries should consult J.W. Holtrop’s Monuments Typographiques des Pays-Bas and Samuel Sotheby’s Principia, both of which contain many excellent reproductions of very early printing. Sotheby’s book is commonly referred to as above, but is published under several different names in editions which vary but little. Perhaps the best is entitled Typography of the Fifteenth Century. SUGGESTIONS TO STUDENTS AND INSTRUCTORS