Excerpt from An Inquiry Concerning the Invention of Printing: In Which the Systems of Meerman, Heinecken, Santander, and Koning Are Reviewed; Including Also Notices of the Early Use of Wood-Engraving in Europe, the Block-Books, Etc<br><br>N ow, would it not have been strange, in a country where fair play is a national motto, if not a single writer had raised his voice in favour of Haerlem and Coster, although every body might be a partisan of Gutenberg and Mentz? Audi alteram partem! Is a most necessary step in the sincere investi gation of truth. It would have been a great scandal if no English bibliographer had taken the trouble of expounding, more fully than had been done hitherto, the facts on which the claims of the citizen of Haerlem to the invention of printing in moveable types are grounded. This task, accepted by Mr. Ottley, has been performed, as the reader will see, with an amount of skill, taste, and conscientious labour which has not been equalled by foreign writers, even directly interested in the glory of the true inventor. The Inquiry concerning the Origin of Printing has the advantage over most of the analogous productions, of being illustrated by numerous engravings, in which are lying before the very eyes of the reader the proof of what is advanced in the book itself, and the means of judging immediately the merit or unworthiness of the argument put forward by the author.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.