Claim: Panfilo Castaldi was an Italian physician and also known as "master of the art of printing," began with glass stamps and eventually developed wooden printing blocks which he used in a printing press in Venice in 1426 several years before Johann Gutenberg's first experiments with metal type in the early 1430s.
Evidence: Panfilo Castaldi (c. 1398 – c. 1490; also called Pamfilo or Pamphilo) was an Italian physician and "master of the art of printing," to whom local tradition attributes the invention of moveable type. As Curzon tells it, Castaldi began with glass stamps made at Murano and eventually developed wooden printing blocks which he used in a printing press in Venice in 1426. This would have been several years before Johann Gutenberg's first experiments with metal type in the early 1430s.