Now over a decade ago Blaise Agüera y Arcas and Paul Needham raised a stir by asking just what did Gutenberg invent? The picture their experimental work painted was of more gradual steps towards the realization of the new technology for casting moveable type than had previously been understood, steps that seemed to show a kind of calligraphic thinking. In recent years more research has also been undertaken on the first Venetian roman types. Manuscripts have been found that show Italian humanist written forms, reminiscent of the printers Jensen and the De Spira brothers early work, and that pre-date them. In this lecture Ewan Clayton the author of ‘The Golden Thread’, a history of writing, reviews the evidence for the interplay of calligraphic and typographic understandings at the origins of western type design.