Date of First Printing
The date at which printing in Hebrew began can not be definitely established. There is a whole series of works without date or place (12-21) which experts are inclined to assign to Rome (where Latin printing began in 1467), and any or all of these may be anterior to the first dated work, which is an edition of Rashi's commentary on the Pentateuch, published in Reggio, Calabria, by Abraham Garton, Feb. 5, 1475. It may be assumed that the actual printing of this work took some time, and that it was begun in the latter part of 1474. Even this must have been preceded by the printing of the four parts of the Ṭurim of Jacob b.Asher, finished July 3, 1475, in Piove di Sacco by Meshullam Cusi, which must have taken considerably longer to print than the Rashi. It is exceptional for Hebrew works to be dated at all before 1482, but from that time onward to 1492, during which decade two-thirds of the Hebrew incunabula were produced, most of them are dated. With the expulsion from Spain in 1492 the Hebrew printing-presses in that country were stopped, and those in Italy and Portugal produced only about a dozen works during the remainder of the century.
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