by Gertrude Burford Rawlings
New York D.Appleton and Company 1901
The wood-block, however, was merely a stepping-stone to the greatest of all events in the history of
printing, the invention of moveable types; that is, of letters formed separately, which, after being
grouped into words, and sentences, and paragraphs, could be redistributed and used again for all sorts
of books. Here once more our Chinese friends were ahead of the rest of the world, for, more than four
centuries before German printers existed, Picheng, a Chinese smith, had shown his countrymen how to
print from moveable types made of burnt clay. But the process which was to prove of such untold value
to those who employed the simple Roman alphabet was almost useless to the Chinese, since the
immense number of their characters rendered the older method the less tedious and cumbersome of the
two.
In China and Japan, therefore, the use of moveable types was of short duration. In Europe, however,
when the art of printing from moveable types once became known, the case was very different.
Once upon a time, as a magnate of the city of Haarlem was walking in a wood near the city, he idly cut
some letters on the bark of a beech tree. It then suddenly occurred to him that these letters might be
impressed upon paper; whereupon he made some impressions of them for the amusement of his
grandchildren.
This, we have learned from our youth up, is how the art of printing came to be discovered. But
unfortunately, this legend is not to be relied upon. As a matter of fact, the first inventor of printing is
unknown, and even as regards moveable types it is impossible to say with absolute certainty when or by
whom the idea was first conceived. Daunon, in his Analyse des Opinions diverses sur l'origine de
I'Imprimerie, tells us that no less than fifteen towns claim to be the birthplace of printing, and that a still
larger number of persons have been put forward as its inventors, from Saturn, Job, and Charlemagne
downwards.
The arguments for or against the pretensions of Saturn, Job, and Charlemagne, and, indeed, of the
majority of the personages whose names have been mentioned in this connection, do not call for notice.
For although the first printer is not known, many believe that they can point him out with tolerable
certainty, and in the fierce battle which has raged round the question of the identity of the inventor of
moveable types, two names alone have been used as the respective war-cries of the opposing armies.
One is Johann Gutenberg of Mentz, and the other, Laurenz Coster of Haarlem.
Although the balance of opinion is now, and always has been, in favour of Gutenberg, the battle has been
long and furious. The diligence of the disputants in collecting data in support of their theories has been
equalled only by the vigour and ferocity with which some of their number have maintained their opinions.
Each side has charged the other with forging evidence, and ink and abuse have been freely poured out in
the cause of typographical truth. Yet though sought for during several centuries, no conclusive proof has
been discovered by either side; typographical truth remains in her well, and the identity of the inventor of
moveable types seems almost as hard to determine as that of the man in the iron mask or the writer of
the letters of Junius.
The partisans of Coster have been as eminent and as able as those of Gutenberg, and thus the
unlearned enquirer finds it difficult to declare for one rather than the other, without investigating for
himself all the ins and outs of this involved subject. Even then, without some previous bias in one or the
other direction, he would probably find himself halting between two opinions. Such an investigation is
obviously out of the question here, and even were it practicable it could hardly be hoped that where so
many doctors disagree our modest effort would produce any valuable result. We shall therefore do no
more than briefly set forth some of the chief arguments on either side as fairly as may be, but without
attempting an exhaustive examination of the evidence, first, however, declaring ourselves as followers of
the majority and partisans of Gutenberg, by way of sheet anchor.
Those who advocate the claims of Holland against Germany largely base their belief on the existence of
various printed books and fragments of Dutch origin, undated, and affording no clue to the time and
place at which they were printed. or to their printer, whether Coster or another. It is much more likely,
they say, that these were the first rude attempts at typography, and that they gave the idea to the
Mentz printers, who forthwith improved upon it, than that the Mentz printers should have given the idea
to the Dutch, who, so far from improving upon it, produced these clumsy imitations of fine German work.
And Mr. Hessels, who made a complete examination of the evidence in favour of Gutenberg, was unable
to say either that Gutenberg invented type-printing, or that he did not in vent it. On the other hand, "it
is certainly possible," say the writers of the Guide to the British Museum, "that actual printing may have
been previously executed in Holland; although, to our minds, the improbability of the printers who are
asserted to have produced Donatus and the Speculum from moveable types ten years before Gutenberg
having produced nothing but the like kind of work for nearly twenty years after him outweighs all the
arguments which have been advanced in support of their claim. It is at all events certain that, without
some very direct and positive evidence on the other side, mankind will continue to regard Gutenberg as
the parent of the art, and Mainz as its birthplace."
Within recent years a claim for the honour of the invention has been put forward on behalf of quite
another part of the world. Some early fifteenth century documents discovered in Avignon make
unmistakable references to printing, and not to zylography, and from them we learn that Procopius
Waldfoghel, a silversmith of Prague, was engaged in printing at Avignon in 1444, and had undertaken to
cut a set of Hebrew types for a Jew whom he had previously instructed in the art of printing. No
specimens of his work are known, and it is therefore impossible to say exactly to what process these
records refer, but it has been conjectured that it may have been some method of stamping letters from
cut type, and not from cast type by means of a press.