A few days ago I attended a talk in All Souls College, Oxford. What a splendid location and what an excellent talk. Dr Paul Nash, a letterpress printer, and resident printing expert at the Bodleian.
He explained how type is cast - and anybody interested may enjoy some brilliant videos on this subject. One on typecasting, produced by Stanley Nelson of the Nelson Atelier, can be found here , and another, showing Stan assembling a mould can be found here
In an interesting question session after the talk, the use of 5 point (yes, 5 point) type was discussed: and it was agreed that composing must have been a nightmare - Dr Nash suggested that tweezers provide the only practical method; and it seems, the value of the the paper being saved must have justified such agonising work.
Somebody raised the issue of hwo the early type-founders knew how many of each letter to cast into a fount: and made a comparison to the skills of a cryptographer in terms of analysing the frequency with which each letter is used. Of course, the numbers could just have been arrived at by trial and error.
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