In the year 1521, Jerome Gebwiler, misled by the assertions of Schott, undertook to controvert the pretensions of Fust and Schœffer as the first printers. He writes that printing was practised in Strasburg by John Mentel, who had obtained the new art of chalcography, or of making books with tin pens (types) about the year 1447; that Mentel, and Eggestein, his partner, made an agreement that they should keep secret the new art; that John Schott, whom he praises, showed him a manuscript book, without date, written by Mentel, in which 
The Arms of the Typothetæ.
[From Hansard.]were drawings of typographic instruments, and observations on the manufacture of printing ink. It was by similar methods that John Schott induced James Spiegel to declare, in a book printed in 1531, that John Mentel invented printing in Strasburg in the year 1444.[1] John Schott is also the authority for the following version of the invention which was found in an old manuscript chronicle attributed to Daniel Specklin.
In the year 1440, the admirable art of printing was discovered in Strasburg by John Mentel. His son-in-law, Peter Schœffer, and Martin Flach at once made use of the discovery; but a servant of Mentel, called John Gensfleisch, after stealing the secret, fled to Mentz, where he soon established the new art, through the help of Gutenberg, a very rich man. Mentel was so affected with grief by this perfidy that it caused his death. In honor of the art, he was buried in the monastery or cathedral church, and a representation of his press was cut on his tombstone. God swiftly punished the servant Gensfleisch, by striking him with blindness for the remnant of his life. I have seen the first press (of Mentel) and the types cut on wood, which were of syllables and words. They were pierced through the sides, that they could be conjoined by a wire and kept in line. It is to be regretted that these types, the first of the kind, should have been lost.[2]
- ↑ In another book Spiegel says 1442.
- ↑ Meerman, Origines Typographicæ, vol. ii, p. 199. It is not clearly proved that Specklin, who was a magistrate of Strasburg at the close of the sixteenth century, is the author of this statement, Bernard says that this version contains about as many errors as words.
