Thank You, John Baskerville

As a printer, John Baskerville strived only for perfection and insisted on controlling nearly every aspect of the printing process and ultimately brought great change to printing process, producing among other things, a sturdier printing bed, faster drying ink and wove papermakeing. The result is a catalog of tedious yet exemplary publications including a run of John Milton's "Paradise Lost" in 1758 as well as a folio Bible printed for the University of Cambridge in 1763.

Adopting a style cleaner and simpler than those of French and Italian printers of the time, Baskerville refined the letterforms of William Caslon, "creating type with more extreme contrast of thick and thin strokes" and produced layouts that highlighted his mastery of the craft, especially his italics which "showed his calligraphic mastery."*

While British rivals shunned Baskerville, American printers took notice and soon Benjamin Franklin introduced Baskerville's type to the States and soon it became the standard type of government documents.

*Quoted from Typophile.com