Typometry (printing)

[4] In the 18th century, the German deacon August Gottlieb Preuschen (1734–1803), from Karlsruhe, published two books on the art of printing maps using movable type.

The printer Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf, based in Leipzig (Germany) was at first critical with the invention, claiming that it was impossible to accurately adapt and assemble different shapes of types to create a new form.

In the early 19th century, two different issues of a French review called the Bulletin de la Société d’Encouragement pour l’Industrie Nationale contains articles about typometry.

After Didot, and until 1832, printers Wegener the Young in Berlin[3] and Georg Michael Bauerkeller (1805–1886) in Frankfurt am Main[8] did some essays with the technique for producing maps, but without attaining much success.

He then combined these this typometric technique with polychromy, so he could print moveable type characters for each geographical feature of the map with their very own precise colour hue.

[3][17] However, with the advent of lithography, invented by Alois Senefelder in 1796, typometry was confronted with another method that was even better at reproducing detail and that allowed to print several solid colours at a low price, so it was progressively abandoned.