Encomion Chalcographiæ, v.v. 65–69.
[47] Kœnig’s cylinder machine, erected for Mr. Bensley the eminent printer, and first set in operation in April 1811, at the manufactory in Whitecross-street, London; when it printed 3000 sheets of the Annual Register, to the admiration of all who saw it at work.
[48] “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time which was before us.”—Ecclesiastes, i. 9, 10. Some days subsequent to that on which I had printed the description of the process, which, after a careful examination of Mr. Humphreys’ fac-simile, I felt convinced was the one which had been adopted for taking impressions of the moveable types used in the Speculum Humanæ Salvationis, I received an illustrated advertisement sheet of Francis Donnison and Son, Printers’ Engineers of Newcastle-on-Tyne, in which is an engraving of an “Improved Galley Proof Press,” which exactly realises the idea I attempted to convey to my readers on pages 83 and 84.
[49] “The Pilgrims of the Rhine,” by Bulwer, (Lord Lytton), p. 313.
[50] “Wimpheling, one of the most learned men of his time, who narrowly escaped persecution for the Protestant tendency of his writings, and who among other things which proved him to have been a thinker in advance of his time, founded a literary society at Strasburg, which soon became celebrated, and the tendencies of which were afterwards praised even by the critical Erasmus.”—Humphreys, p. 82.
[51] “De l’Origine de l’Imprimerie.” Paris, 1853.
[52] “Kritische Geschichte der Erfindung der Buchdruckerkunst durch Johann Gutenberg zu Mainz.” von J. Wetter. Mainz, 1836. 8vo. pp. xvi. 808, with 13 Tables of fac-similes.
[53] “Characteres enim a primus illis inventoribus non ita eleganter et expedite, ut a nostris fieri solet, sed filo in litterarum foramen immisso, connectebantur, sicut Venetiis id genus typos me vidisse memini.”
[54] The family of the Fusts was one of great respectability. It consisted at this time of three brothers; John the banker and money-lender; James, the city architect, and subsequently a goldsmith as well; and Nicholas, a judge in one of the Courts of law. John married his wife Margaret about the year 1420; one son, Conrad, was the only issue of the marriage. Conrad married in 1445, and his daughter, Christina, was, in 1465, bestowed in marriage upon Peter Schœffer of Gernszheim. It appears from some accounts that John Faust was also a goldsmith; a business with which banking and money-lending were usually combined.
[55] There is another version of the circumstances attending the connection of Gutenberg with Faust. Gutenberg senior, say the claimants of the honor of the invention for the first printer at Strasburg, returned to Mentz in 1440, having stolen the knowledge of the art from Mentelin, their countryman, who they assert was the original inventor. Dutch authorities however say, that Gutenberg’s return to Mentz, in 1440, was after he stole the types, &c., from Coster, the original inventor at Haarlem. Like Sir Boyle Roche’s bird, he was thus in two places at one and the same time. After his return he printed, in 1442, the two school-books ‘Alexandri Galli Doctrinale,’ and ‘Petri Hispani Tractatus,’ and then, in 1443, took the house ‘Zum Jungen,’ when he was joined in partnership by Faust, J. Meidenbachius, J. Petersheimius, and others, whose names have not been recorded, and in 1444 by Gutenberg junior, who then quitted Strasburg for that express purpose. That in 1450 this partnership was dissolved, when Faust and Gutenberg junior entered into a new partnership, the senior being no longer heard of. These statements are at best but conjectural, and have been made with the view of affording support to the systems of writers who deny to Gutenberg the honor of having invented the Typographic Art.