First, you should clarify whether you really mean ‘alphabet’ in the technical sense of the term. Not all systems of writing are alphabets. The invention of the alphabet preceded type, and the invention of type preceded the use of alphabetic writing systems where it was first used (East Asia). Or do you mean to restrict the discussion to the use of type related to the Roman alphabet, and perhaps you are thinking about the evolution of the canonical letterforms of the alphabet?

What part of your life would you say, is the most influencial, do you have a name for example ?

Andrew Robinson, The story of writing, Thames and Hudson, London 1995.

Daniel Berkeley Updike, Printing types: their history, forms and use, Oak Knoll - The British Library, New Castle (Delaware) - London 2001.

Jongseong, How was your Language handled by yesterday typewriters (if any)?
No link please, answer in your own words, if possible.
Thanx with Flowers

Well, my language is Korean, but you are talking about the writing system. Korean is written primarily in the native Hangul alphabet nowadays, but this wasn’t invented until the 15th century. Before that, Chinese ideographs were used, and nearly all written material was in classical Chinese. The educated elite continued to write in classical Chinese long after Hangul was invented, and Hangul didn’t really become predominant until the 20th century. Printing has a long tradition in Korea that precedes the invention of Hangul by centuries—in fact, the oldest surviving Korean printed document, a Buddhist scripture, dates from 751. So most pre-20th-century Korean type is for Chinese characters.

As an aside, there’s a Chinese-Hangul bilingual inscription on a tombstone in northern Seoul that warns those who would disturb the tomb, and also declares that the Hangul version was added for the benefit of those who couldn’t read writing. Says a lot about the status of Hangul in those days when reading in the vernacular script didn’t even count as reading.

Anyway, the thousands of glyphs needed for Chinese character type means that the evolution of type takes a very different course in Korea. Because of the amount of labour that went into producing type, type production was largely state-directed.

Moveable metal type developed in the 13th century and by the time of King Sejong, the inventor of Hangul, metal type production was at a sophisticated phase. Typically metal type would be cast based on the hand of renowned calligraphers. The so-called Gabin casting of 1434 was based on a certain hand available in some hand-written books, and missing glyphs were supplied by the future King Sejo, one of Sejong’s sons.

Hangul is a much more interesting example because upon its creation, it was immediately was cast in moveable type. It must be unique among the major writing systems in this respect. The very first document produced using this script, the Hunmin Jeongeum (1446) is a manuscript, but the first Hangul type was cast in 1447 for used in the mixed-script Dongguk Jeong-un, and it was followed in 1449 by Seokbo Sangjeol, the first Hangul document printed in moveable metal type. (Edited because I had this wrong—I thought Hunmin Jeongeum was printed.)

Even though Hangul is an alphabet, the letters are arranged in syllabic blocks, so the blocks are the basic units for traditional Hangul typeface design. As the number of Hangul syllables is almost endless (see the Unicode chart for Hangul syllables), the situation was similar to that of Chinese characters and again producing Hangul type was a state monopoly until I think maybe the 18th or 19th century. As an invented script, the first Hangul typefaces had really geometric designs (think Futura), and it looks like the same type was used for the glyphs 눈 and 곡 for example, just flipped over. Later typefaces mimicked calligraphy more.

I thought I would answer about Korean and type in general, but since you specifically asked about typewriters, I’ll add that the first Hangul typewriter was introduced in 1949 by Gong Byeong-u. There are a number of typewriter solutions for Hangul, but I think Gong’s separates syllable-initial consonants and syllable-final consonants as different keys, so it’s called sebeolsik (“three sets”, that is including vowels as the third set of keys). It’s a really beautiful solution, and many modern Hangul typeface designs owe a lot to the letterforms produced by Gong’s typewriter.

i mean as in the formation of when the alphabet became known as an alphabet and used for communication purposes, if that helps any further.

Hangul makes other writing systems look like village idiots.

hhp

May God bless your Clicking finger, Jongseong
More Curious to know the he mechanism of Gong’s typewriter.
Where does the typist start typing, top right, top Left, bottom right or bottom Left of the paper?
Where does the Spacebar take the paper? Left, right, up or down? Or Alternating?
Where does the Stepping Knob take the paper? Left, right, up or down? Or Alternating?
Asking to find the right answers to the questions raised here

Many Thanx

Korean typewriters produce horizontal text, left-to-right and with lines going down, just like how the Roman alphabet is written. I think there are some “advance width” tricks to make sure the syllabic blocks are formed properly, but otherwise the mechanics are the same as in Roman alphabet typewriters.

Traditionally, Hangul was written vertically, but nowadays Hangul is always written horizontally for longer text unless one is going for a faux-antique look. Now that I think about it, the introduction of Gong’s typewriter may very well mark the shift in momentum to horizontal writing for Hangul.

The 20th-century shift from vertical to horizontal writing presents some interesting issues for Hangul typeface design. Digital revivals of pre-horizontal-writing typefaces have to pay attention to the horizontal alignment of the glyphs. Until around the 1980s, Hangul typefaces used the same sort of glyph designs as the pre-horizontal-writing typefaces, only arranged horizontally and with a centred alignment. Nowadays, text typefaces are being designed so that the lines have a slightly higher centre of weight, which I think works better for horizontal writing.

For fun, I have tried out writing Hangul vertically by hand a few times, but I can’t quite seem to get the alignment and spacing right.

That was a nice rundown of Korean Hangul development. I was in the Queens Library, NY a couple years ago when the Ch’ongju Early Printing History Museum lent some of their examples of early metal moveable type, woodtype and xylographically printed books and manuscripts.

Here are two examples from their catalogue:

1434

1587

And for Missgiggles:
Alessandro Segalini’s suggestions are excellent.

3 more books for your exploration:

The Alphabet Abecedarium: Some Notes on Lettters
by Richard A. Firmage
David R Godine, publishers

The Alphabetic Labyrinth: Letters in History and Imagination
by Johanna Drucker
Thames and Hudson, publishers

The Solid Form of Language: An Essay on Writing and Meaning
by Robert Bringhurst
Gasperau Press, publishers

thanks, i’ll see if i can get hold of those books.