Page:Historic printing types, a lecture read before the Grolier club of New York, January 25, 1885, with additions and new illustrations; by De Vinne, Theodore Low, 1828-1914; Grolier Club.djvu/15

 II The Black Letter or Gothic Type of the Early German Printers. HE oldest type-printing containing an authentic date is a Letter of Indulgence dated 1454, in which the date is written in. The oldest type- printing containing an authentic printed date is the Psalter of 1457, which bears the imprint of John Fust of Mentz and Peter Schoeffer of Grernszheim. We also know of a Latin Bible, in folio, 42 lines to the page, in First books double columns, one copy of which contains the written from types, statement of the illuminator that his work on the book was finished at Mentz in the year 1456. And there is another edition of a Latin Bible in double columns, 36 lines to the page, which was probably done before 1459. All these pieces of printing are correlated. The types are of different sizes, but of marked resemblance as to cut or style. I shall not here discuss the relative claims of Fust and Schoeffer to the invention. It is enough to say that it is the general belief that these books are the work, Typography dependent on separately or jointly, of Ghitenberg, Fust, and Schoeffer ; type-founding, and that they were " made by a new and unheard-of art," or, as the Psalter of 1457 explicitly states, " by the mas- 11