[supercat]

Actually, by the time of the American Revolution, something called movable type had been invented. Credit for this generally goes to a fella named Gutenberg, who invented it in the 1440's.

Had the practice of using movable types to form solid lead plates yet come into common use? Although someone with a quantity of type and some frames could set up pages far more quickly than a person would be able to engrave them, I think it was the production of printing plates from lead type that really made books affordable. Prior to that, one had to print all of the copies of a page that one would ever want fairly soon after setting it up (type was too expensive and scarce to simply leave pages set indefinitely in case they needed to be reprinted).

[Little Ray]

No. I don't think that didn't come into practice until much later.