Guidonian hand
In Medieval music, the Guidonian hand was a mnemonic device used to assist singers in learning to sight-sing. Some form of the device may have been used by Guido of Arezzo, a medieval music theorist who wrote a number of treatises, including one instructing singers in sightreading. The hand occurs in some manuscripts before Guido's time as a tool to find the semitone; it does not have the depicted form until the 12th century. Sigebertus Gemblacensis in 1105–10 did describe Guido using the joints of the hand to aid in teaching his hexachord. The Guidonian hand is closely linked with Guido's new ideas about how to learn music, including the use of hexachords, and the first known Western use of solfege.
Aldus Manutius
Manutius commissioned the punchcutter Francesco Griffo of Bologna to create the new typeface. The handwriting reproduced for the many Aldine Press typefaces is a topic of conflicting opinions by scholars; the "1911 Encyclopædia Britannica" suggests Petrarch's handwriting, while the "New Aldine Studies" presumes the handwriting of scribes Pomponio Leto and Bartolomeo Sanvito was the inspiration for the typeface. Other scholars believe the first Greek typeface was derived from the handwriting of Immanuel Rhusotas, another scribe during the time of Manutius. The Aldine Press commissioned the first Greek script designed "with accents and letters cast separately and combined by the compositor." The typeface was first used in publishing "Erotemata" by Constantine Lascaris in 1495. The Roman typeface was finished later the same year and Pietro Bembo's "De Aetna" was the first book published in the new Roman script.