Technology

The articles in the Encyclopédie’s books are all printed on paper using a printing press. In 17^th century France, parchment made from animal skins was largely left behind in favor of paper, which is what the collection was printed on.

The printing press works by using an arrangement of type pieces attached to a large wooden frame to stamp ink onto a page. Each type piece can print a letter, and there is a variety of numbers, and lower- and upper-case letters. The type, made of metal at the time, would be selected and arranged into the composing stick to form the desired sentence. Once the frame had all the appropriate type in place, ink was applied to the ends of the type pieces. The paper would then be aligned in the wooden press, and the type would be manually stamped on the page.

Though there were only a small number copies of the complete collection of the Encyclopédie initially printed, the printing press makes it easy to print several identical copies of the same book, unlike a scribe would with a quill and parchment. Once the books were published, they were open to the public to read. During its ban, the Encyclopédie was taken out of libraries and wasn’t sold in bookstores, meaning the public couldn’t access any copies that people didn’t already own. Despite this, the project could still continue, and books were still being written until completion. However, being in a written format during a period of unrest, the project was still at risk of material damage, being lost, or being altered in the editing process.