Show gutenbergs a S INVENTION press else baa don dome f afaf abas the tb printing Man kloo five fit hundred years ago the literary zeitgeist inky fingered and forlorn cried out tor for help and his cry waa as hew heard d in germany and answered by the birth of gutenberg in 1397 who gave to the world in 1450 its first completed competed printing press says the new york world four men writes the german historian kapp gutenberg columbus luther and copernicus at the dividing line of the middle aos ages and serve as boundary stones marking the entrance of mankind into a and finer epoch of its development from centers of discovery ard ard invention in ever widening circles tt th I 1 development has gone on but of ail ai the means by which the chine dh me flat fial lot there be light has been fulfilled in its inner sense through thelong the long ages there has been none in th the material realm that has exerted an influence as powerful and far reaching as thi the printing press co compared with thit thi lis discovery covery which has evolved from th nebular chaos of mans thoughts and emotions the vast solar system ol 01 books even the finding of a new continent pales in significance the priority of gutenbergs discovery over that thai of columbus is in itself evidence of its vaster and more urgent import however it may be now there was a time when we needed a printing press more than we needed another hemisphere for there has never been any miscalculation cu lation in the order of the diac discoveries overleE and inventions of the unive universe raie the an and maxims never coald have been born before the NL and watts any more than man could coald have made his appearance in the early pro eras tho the wonders of electricity and roentgen rays are the culminating luxuries of invention so to speak and not its first necessities added to all al the bare utilitarian services it has ren dered mankind the printing press ha enabled man to repeat in a spiritual tuai sense the divine drama of creation and many an ink begotten hero Is as ai living and effectual an inspiration tc noble deeds as though he had alve and breathed in human form it is moreover by means of their typographical cerements cere ments that the real heroes ol oj every land and clime have escaped oblivion better than all the promises ol 01 immortality offered to ulysses by calypso has been the immortality bonfe rk upon him and his comrades by the nc less leaa magical wand of the printer were our mother island sunk beneath th sea A wrote lowell shakespeare would still be an immortal england ot or the other hand candor compels admission that sinful man has mad use of type as of every other invention tor for base and ignoble ends but the most moet pigheaded pig headed pessimist would hardly maintain that the evil results result thus obtained could be more than ar an infinitesimal part of the good ones for the printing press has demonstrated in a most convincing manner that thai only what is good and beautiful is per manent every vile and morbid book has died or eventually will die of iti own diseases till at length authors and publishers will have learned the foll foil of printing such things it is not mere men fancy that sees in the steady external improvement that has been made or the first book models a symbol of as an internal progress in the matter between the covers of however much antiquarian rapture we may feel when we buy a worm eaten old book in fit century print we cannot dena den that in their superb typographical ward robes the books of today to day as far surpass the first gutenberger Guten bergen bargen attempts al ai the dainty tinted gowns of a modem belle the impromptu makeshift of our fig leaved mother eve concerning the respective claims of gutenberg and koster to the discovery ol 01 movable types we have no desire ta t quibble if they had not invented something of the kind somebody elst els would have done so about the sam time or a little later be that as ii may in recognition of his service ta mankind we are willing to pledge mr gutenbergs health he surely would excuse us from drinking it unless wt w followed it up by swallowing a blotter in a brimming bumper of ink |