In the middle of the fifteenth century, the German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg discovered that an alloy of tin, lead, and antimony in the proper proportions could be easily melted and poured into a matrix of tiny molds, one for each letter of the alphabet. This made it possible for lines of type to be assembled from individual letters, known as “movable type.” By contrast, the method of woodblock printing—the most common method of printing at that time—required the printer to carve an entire page of text and illustrations from a single block of wood.
