The specification of the name of the alleged proto-typographer of Haarlem was made for the first time in a book now known as _Batavia_, which was published in 1588, and of which Hadrianus Junius or Adrien de Jonghe was the author. The story of the invention, as here related, is far from complete, but it is positive and definite: it gives the time, the place, the book and the man. It can be fairly presented only in an unabridged translation of the author’s words: About one hundred and twenty-eight years ago, there dwelt in a house of some magnificence (as may be verified by inspection, for it stands intact to this day) in Haarlem, near to the market, and opposite the royal palace, Laurentius Joannes, surnamed Æditus or Custos, by reason of this lucrative and honorable office, which by hereditary right appertained to the distinguished family of this name. To this man should revert the wrested honor of the invention of the typographic art, which has been wrongfully enjoyed by others. A just judgment [p331] should give to him before all others, the laurel which he has deserved as the most successful contestant. When strolling in the woods near the city, as citizens who enjoyed ease were accustomed to do after dinner and on holidays, it happened that he undertook as an experiment to fashion the bark of a beech tree in the form of letters. The letters so made he impressed the reverse way, consecutively, upon a leaf of paper, in little lines of one kind and another, and the kindness of his nature induced him to give them, as a keepsake, to the grandchildren of his son-in-law [Thomas Pieterzoon]. He had succeeded so happily in this that he aspired to greater things, as became a man of cultivated and enlarged capacities. By the aid of his son-in-law, Thomas Pieterzoon, to whom were left four children, most of whom attained the dignity of burgomaster (I say this that all the world may know that this art was invented in a reputable and honorable family, and not among plebeians), he invented, first of all, an ink thicker and more viscid than that of the scribes, for he found that the common ink spread or blotted. Thereupon he made, by the addition of letters, explanations for pictures engraved on wood.