Industrial arts -- Biography; Inventors -- Biography
Under these circumstances, it appeared to Koenig that only two
alternatives remained for him to adopt. One was to commence an
expensive, and it might be a protracted, suit in Chancery, in defence
of his patent rights, with possibly his partner, Bensley, against him;
and the other, to abandon his invention in England without further
struggle, and settle abroad. He chose the latter alternative, and left
England finally in August, 1817.
Mr. Richard Taylor, the other partner in the patent, was an honourable
man; but he could not control the proceedings of Bensley. In a memoir
published by him in the 'Philosophical Magazine,' "On the Invention and
First Introduction of Mr. Koenig's Printing Machine," in which he
honestly attributes to him the sole merit of the invention, he says,
"Mr. Koenig left England, suddenly, in disgust at the treacherous
conduct of Bensley, always shabby and overreaching, and whom he found
to be laying a scheme for defrauding his partners in the patents of all
the advantages to arise from them. Bensley, however, while he
destroyed the prospects of his partners, outwitted himself, and
grasping at all, lost all, becoming bankrupt in fortune as well as in
character."[6]
Koenig was badly used throughout. His merits as an inventor were
denied. On the 3rd of January, 1818, after he had left England,
Bensley published a letter in the Literary Gazette, in which he speaks
of the printing machine as his own, without mentioning a word of
Koenig. The 'British Encyclopaedia,' in describing the inventors of
the printing machine, omitted the name of Koenig altogether. The
'Mechanics Magazine,' for September, 1847, attributed the invention to
the Proprietors of The Times, though Mr. Walter himself had said that
his share in the event had been "only the application of the
discovery;" and the late Mr. Bennet Woodcroft, usually a fair man, in
his introductory chapter to 'Patents for Inventions in Printing,'
attributes the merit to William Nicholson's patent (No. 1748), which,
he said, "produced an entire revolution in the mechanism of the art."
In other publications, the claims of Bacon and Donkin were put forward,
while those of the real inventor were ignored. The memoir of Koenig by
Mr. Richard Taylor, in the 'Philosophical Magazine,' was honest and
satisfactory; and should have set the question at rest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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