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type, for printing, was invented in China (c.1040), using woodblocks. Related devices, such as seals and stamps for making impressions in clay, had been used in ancient times in Babylon and elsewhere. Movable type made from metal molds were developed in Korea as early as the beginning of the 13th cent. However, there is no evidence that the European invention of movable type attributed to Johann Gutenberg was influenced by Eastern developments. The first dated printing from movable type in Europe is a papal indulgence, printed at Mainz in 1454. The first dated book printed from movable type was a Psalter printed by Fust and Schöffer on the Gutenberg press at Mainz in 1457. Gutenberg's Mazarin Bible, completed at Mainz not later than 1455, is believed to be the first book printed in Europe from movable type. The type used in these beginnings of European printing was of the kind known as black letter or Gothic, represented now by such types as Old English and German. The forms of the letters were derived from popular handwriting styles. Other styles suggested the letter forms of roman and italic type. Roman type was used by several printers before Nicolas Jenson so improved it as to ensure its triumph as the standard type. Italic type was first used by Aldus Manutius, who also introduced small capitals. Roman type is of two basic sorts, old style and modern. The modern type emphasizes the contrast between light and heavy lines and has conspicuous level serifs; the old style type keeps its lines of nearly the same weight and has inconspicuous serifs, some of them sloping. Qualities of old style and modern types are often combined. Into the mid-20th cent. type characters were usually made by pouring metal into previously cut matrices and, less frequently, by processes using plastics and other synthetic materials. Computerization of type design and photomechanical printing techniques have almost entirely replaced metal type. Famous designers of types include, in addition to those named above, Geofroy Tory, Claude Garamond, Robert Granjon, Christopher van Dyck, William Caslon, John Baskerville, Giambattista Bodoni, François Ambroise Didot, William Morris, Bruce Rogers, and F. W. Goudy. See typography.

Bibliography

See F. W. Goudy, Alphabet and Elements of Lettering (1922, reprinted); H. Lehmann-Haupt, One Hundred Books about Bookmaking (1949); J. R. Biggs, An Approach to Type (2d ed. 1962); S. Carter, Twentieth-century Type Designers (1987); A. S. Lawson with D. Agner, Printing Types (rev. and expanded ed. 1990); W. P. Jaspert et al., Encyclopaedia of Type Faces (5th ed. 2001); D. B. Updike, Printing Types (4th ed. 2001); P. Baines and A. Haslam, Type and Typography (2002). See also bibliography under typography.

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(1) In data or text entry, to press the keys on the keyboard.

(2) In programming, a category of variable that is determined by the kind of data stored in it. For example, integer, floating point, string, logical, date and binary are common data types.

(3) (Type) In DOS and OS/2, a command that displays the contents of a text file. See DOS Type.

Try Typing on These Keys!

This was high tech in the 1890s, but it wasn't so easy tapping these keys. Notice there's no QWERTY keyboard. Considered the first portable typewriter, George Blickensderfer created this beauty in 1893. (Equipment courtesy of Dorothy Hearn.)

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(theory, programming)

type - (Or "data type") A set of values from which a variable, constant, function, or other expression may take its value. A type is a classification of data that tells the compiler or interpreter how the programmer intends to use it. For example, the process and result of adding two variables differs greatly according to whether they are integers, floating point numbers, or strings. Types supported by most programming languages include integers (usually limited to some range so they will fit in one word of storage), Booleans, floating point numbers, and characters. Strings are also common, and are represented as lists of characters in some languages. If s and t are types, then so is s -> t, the type of functions from s to t; that is, give them a term of type s, functions of type s -> t will return a term of type t. Some types are primitive - built-in to the language, with no visible internal structure - e.g. Boolean; others are composite - constructed from one or more other types (of either kind) - e.g. lists, arrays, structures, unions. Object-oriented programming extends this with classes which encapsulate both the structure of a type and the operations that can be performed on it. Some languages provide strong typing, others allow implicit type conversion and/or explicit type conversion.