The Baskerville typeface is familiar to billions of readers and users of standard computer software across the world. However, the story behind its creation by John Baskerville (1707-75) is much less widely known. This is despite the fact that he was England’s foremost printer, and what he called his “small performances” in typeface design “went forth to astonish all librarians of Europe”. From a broader perspective, printing is recognised as the invention of the millennium, and a democratiser of knowledge – and yet it remains ubiquitous but invisible, and how it happens is not generally known. This talk presents a new, interdisciplinary project which seeks to make a substantial contribution to the history of printing technology, while ensuring this is a living process that will continue. At its heart is the exceptional collection of typographic punches designed, cut, and used at Baskerville’s workshop in Birmingham, which are now held at Cambridge University Library. Individually engraved in steel, punches were the first of three stages in the manufacturing of metal type – one that posed challenges in both materials and design – and therefore they preserve otherwise inaccessible information that can be unlocked through scientific study.