Hello everyone and welcome to the History of England episode 200, Printon and Perkin.

You are all probably aware that shed casts is now live. Randall suggested I allow you to

buy a sub as a Christmas present which is a fab idea. Can you imagine the joy? Possibly

don't answer that. But if you do wish to make like Frank and do that very thing, email

me at David54031 at gmail.com, that's David54031 at gmail.com or go to the website the

historyofingland.co.uk where I've posted how this might work.

I have also spoken many times of the network I belong to, a Gora podcast network, Hop

along to the website at gorapodcast.com where you can see a host of podcasts to delight you all.

Last week we finished on printing and Gutenberg's story. This week we'll talk about the spread of

printing and our very own William Caxton. Then it's back to Henry VII and the obsession of the

first half of his reign, the search for security. One of the earlier developments of Gutenberg's

work was in the type of typeface. Gutenberg had chosen a gothic, a thick letter script.

Apparently this came from something called Caroline Minnescule which was a standard developed

for writing so that Latin writing would look the same and the less literate would struggle

less to read it because it was standardised. The things you learn writing history podcasts.

But in Italy they looked at gothic and mattered something about those out of date Germans.

What about the humanist spirit of the age? We need something more classical.

Two German printers working in Italy at the time therefore developed the second of the three

founding typefaces of printing. They did it by looking at all those monumental Roman inscriptions

and then invented a lower case to go alongside it. Those inscriptions all being

in capitals of course which Henry were clapped. And so Roman type was born.

Around 1500 the third basic typeface was developed when italic types joined the library.

...