The same conditions of doubt and obscurity surround the invention of printing. As we shall later see, more at length, the invention of printing was a development of existing processes called for by the needs of the time and arising out of the conditions of the time. It was inevitable that typographic printing should be discovered by somebody in the middle of the fifteenth century. So far as the evidence at our command shows, the art was not invented in several places at the same time, but was developed by one man out of familiar processes. For some reason which is not now clear, the work of this man, though considerable in extent, appears to have been without immediate direct results of much importance. At a very early stage the invention was seized upon by another who, with his associates, established a center from which the art steadily grew and developed. So important in its practical results was the work of this man and his associates that he has been for centuries hailed as the inventor of printing. It is needless to say that this man was John Gutenberg. In the judgment of the present writer, however, the claim that Gutenberg invented typographic printing cannot be maintained. The discussion has been long and sometimes bitter. The arguments, or at least many of them, are of a highly technical nature and many minor points yet remain to be cleared up. In a book of this sort it would be obviously out of place to go at length into the details of the argument. The writer, moreover, lays no claim to original investigation. An attempt will be made in the following pages to show the conditions out of which the discovery arose, to tell the story of the invention, to place the credit both of actual invention and practical application where it belongs, and to bring out certain points which may be interesting about the work of the very earliest printers. In taking the position which he does with regard to the invention the writer regrets that he is obliged to dissent from the conclusions of De Vinne. In his Invention of Printing, De Vinne ably maintains the claims of Gutenberg. No one can be more ready than the present writer to pay homage to the greatness of De Vinne and to acknowledge the immense debt which the printers of America owe to him. His series of historical and critical essays on the practice of typography are still unapproachable. In spite of the changes which have taken place in the years since they were written, their substance is not affected excepting in some minor and unimportant details. They are still supreme authority in their field. De Vinne’s historical work was also of great importance and for the most part may still be accepted without question. Under these circumstances it is only natural that the conclusions of De Vinne should carry great weight and that the great body of American printers should have accepted the Gutenberg attribution without question upon De Vinne’s authority.