Brederodes. He died sometime between 1434 and 1440. He invented typography about 1428 or 1430, using only movable types of wood. All that Junius has written about an invention of lead and tin types by Coster is incorrect. He thinks it useless to consider the engraving of letters upon solid wood-blocks, for this is not typography, and is not printing as we now understand it. Laurens was robbed on Christmas night, 1440, by Johan Gensfleisch the elder, who carried the art to Mentz. The son-in-law and heirs of Coster continued his business for some time after his death, but with little appreciation, as they were overshadowed by the superior invention of Gutenberg and Schœffer. Coster printed but one edition of the Speculum from types of wood. His successors printed the other Dutch edition and the two Latin editions from engraved metal types. The contributions of different inventors toward the perfect invention are acknowledged in this manner: Laurens Coster was the first to demonstrate the feasibility of typography by his use of wood types; John Gensfleisch was the first to make cut or engraved metal types; Peter Schœffer was the inventor of cast or founded metal types; John Gutenberg and John Fust were printers who invented nothing.
Meerman had fair warning from the type-founder and printer John Enschedé that his theories of wood types[1] and of cut metal types were preposterous. He did not heed the warning. He wrote, not for printers, but for bibliographers who believed in the practicability of wood types, and he did not mistake his readers. The bibliographers, who knew little or nothing of the theory or practice of type-making, were not competent to criticise the mechanical part of his theory. He hoped to disarm the prejudices of German authors by his frank acknowledgment of the contributions of Schœffer and Gensfleisch as co-inventors. The novelty of his theory, the
- ↑ John Enschedé then said that "Jansen Koster used no wooden movable letters, as later, and still living scholars [Meerman] assert—scholars who know nothing of the mechanism of type-founding—and who, therefore, gently swerve from the path of simple truth." Meerman's reason for rating this Dutch edition of the Speculum as first of all was the inferior appearance of the types and the printing, which inferiority, he maintained, had been produced by wood types and want of experience in presswork. Fournier told him truly that the types of his alleged first edition were metal types; that the printing of the book was inferior because the types were worn out; that his first edition had all the signs of a last edition—but Meerman refused this explanation.
