Note 55 — Early Typography. CHAPTER III.

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.

The quotations in the text are from the record of legal proceedings taken by Faust against Gutenberg in 1455. This record was printed in German by Seckenburg in “Selectis Juris et Historiarum,” tom. i. pp. 269–277; by Wolfius, in his “Monumenta Typographica,” tom. i. p. 472 et seq., and by Wetter, pp. 284–290.