In 1806 Frederick Kœnig, the son of a small farmer at Eisleben in Saxon Prussia, came to England with a project for a steam printing press. The idea was not a new one, for sixteen years before an Englishman, named William Nicholson, took out a patent for a machine for printing, which foreshadowed nearly every fundamental improvement even in the most advanced machines of the present day. But from want of means, or some other cause, Nicholson never actually made a machine. Nor did Kœnig's project meet with much encouragement until he walked into the printing-house of Thomas Bensley of Bolt Court, who encouraged the inventor to proceed, and supplied him with the necessary funds. There is reason to believe that Kœnig made himself acquainted with the details of Nicholson's patent during the time that his machine was building. He also obtained the assistance of Andrew F. Bauer, an ingenious German mechanic. His first patent was taken out on the 29th March 1810, a second in 1812, a third in 1814, and a fourth in 1816. The first machine is said to have taken three years to build, and upon its completion was erected in Bensley's office in Bolt Court. There seems to be considerable uncertainty as to what was the first publication printed on it. Some say it was set to work on the _Annual Register_, one writer[20] asserting that in April 1811, 3000 sheets of that publication were printed on it; but Mr. Southward, in his monograph _Modern Printing_, confines himself to the statement that two sheets of a book were printed on the machine in 1812. Curiously enough neither Bensley's publication, the _Annual Register_, nor the _Gentleman's Magazine_ takes any notice of the new invention, although in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1811 there is a notice of a printing machine invented at Philadelphia, which apparently embodied all the same principles as Kœnig's (_Gent. Mag._, vol. lxxxi. p. 576). In 1814 John Walter, the second proprietor of the _Times_, saw Kœnig's machine, and ordered one to be supplied to the _Times_ office, the first number printed by steam being that of the 28th November 1814. This machine was a double cylinder, which printed simultaneously two copies of a forme of the newspaper on one side only. But it was a cumbersome and complicated affair, and its greatest output 1800 impressions per hour.