Gutenberg and John Fust were printers who invented nothing. Meerman had fair warning from the type-founder and printer John Enschedé that his theories of wood types[209] and of cut metal types were preposterous. He did not heed the warning. He wrote, not for printers, but for bibliographers who believed in the practicability of wood types, and he did not mistake his readers. The bibliographers, who knew little or nothing of the theory or practice of type-making, were not competent to criticise the mechanical part of his theory. He hoped to disarm the prejudices of German authors by his frank acknowledgment of the contributions of Schœffer and Gensfleisch as co-inventors. The novelty of his theory, the [p356] judicial equity with which he decreed to Coster, Gensfleisch and Schœffer what he said was their share in the honors of the invention, the temperate tone and calm philosophic spirit in which the book was written, the breadth of scholarship displayed in exact quotations from a great number of authors, won admirers in all countries. The theory of Meerman about a contributive invention need not be examined here: it has been entirely refuted by many French and German authors; it was abandoned even by Hollanders[210] at the beginning of the present century. The authority of the book is at an end. The conviction that all previously written defences of the legend were untenable, caused a scientific society of Holland to offer a prize for the best treatise on the invention. Jacobus Koning was the successful competitor. In 1816, he published, under the sanction of the society, the essay that had won the prize, under the title of “_The Origin, Invention and Development of Printing_.” It was an inquiry of more than ordinary merit—the first book on the subject which showed evidences of original research. Koning tried to supplement the many deficiencies of Junius, with extracts from the records of the old church and town of Haarlem, which he had studied with diligence. He brought to light a great deal of information about one Laurens Janszoon, whom he confounded, as Meerman had done, with Lourens Janszoon Coster. This is the substance of his discoveries and of his conclusions therefrom: