History of Western typography Erhard Ratdolt c. 1486 was cut to suit Venetian taste. In 1476 William Caxton, having learned his craft on the Continent, printed the first books in England with a so-called Bâtarde type (an early Schwabacher design), but soon abandoned it. The early printers of Spain were Germans who began by printing in up-to-date roman types but soon gave these up and adopted Gothic typefaces based on the letterforms of Spanish manuscripts. Valencia in the Kingdom of Aragon was the location of the first press, established in 1473. From there printers moved to other cities to set up presses. Roman types
Printing press a center of early printing, print shops had been established in 77 cities and towns by 1500. At the end of the following century, 151 locations in Italy had seen at one time printing activities, with a total of nearly three thousand printers known to be active. Despite this proliferation, printing centres soon emerged; thus, one third of the Italian printers published in Venice. By 1500, the printing presses in operation throughout Western Europe had already produced more than twenty million copies. In the following century, their output rose tenfold to an estimated 150 to 200 million copies. European printing