In theory, early printers could have created small, versatile metal drawings, too. In practice, they tended to be conservative about making new pieces of type: the first English printers imported their presses from Continental Europe, where no one used the English letter þ (thorn), so English printers substituted either the “th” letter sequence (which won out in most places) or the similar-looking letter “y” (which survives in a few limited contexts like Ye Olde Tea Shoppe).