Right you are, Bob. I did some further checking (sparked my curiosity) and learned that movable type was first developed in China in the eleventh century, and the idea may (or may not) have been brought back to Europe by Marco Polo. Europeans fiddled with it off and on, using laboriously carved wooden type (by now the Chinese had decided that it didn't work very well because it kept breaking, and switched to clay). Gutenberg didn't invent movable type, he just made it work; one source says by "bringing together concept of movable type with the technologies of paper, oil-based ink, and the wine-press."

Major thread creep here. Sorry about that.

Don Firth