Phillipsburg herald. [volume] (Phillipsburg, Kan.) 1882-1905, 1896-07-30
ourENeERo.s INVENTION.
what tho PrlntIng Press Has Done fol
MankInd

Five hundred years ago the literary
zeltgeist, inky-fngered and forlorn,
cried out for help, and his cry was
heard in Germany and answered by the
birth of Gutenberg in 1897, who gave
10 the world, in 1850, its first COM
2leted printing press, says the New
York World. -Four men," writes the
German historian Kapp, Gutenberg,
Columbus, Luther and Copernicus,
stand at the dividing line Of the middle
ages and serve as boundary stones
marking the entrance Of mankind into
a higher and finer epoch of its develop
ment." From centers of discovery and
invention In Overwhelming circles that
development has gone ON. But Of all
the means by which the divine fat
LET there be light" has been fulfilled
in its inner sense-through the long
ages, there has been none in the mate
rial realm that has exerted an influence
as powerful and far-reaching as the
printing press. Compared with this
discovery, which has evolved from the
nebular chaos Of mans thoughts and
emotions the vast solar system of
books, even the finding Of a new con-
tinent, pales in significance. The pri-
GRITTY of Gutenberg's discovery over that
vaster and more urgent import. How
ever 1t may be now, there was a time
when we needed printing press more
than we needed another hemisphere.
For there has never been any miscal-
culation in the order Of the discoveries
and inventions Of the universe. The
Edisons and Maxims never could have
been born before the Newtons and
Watts any more than man could have
made his appearance in the early pro-
tozoan eras. The wonders Of electricity
and Roentgen rays are the eliminating
luXuries of invention so to speak, and
not its first necessities. Added to all
the bare unitarian services 1t has rem
dered mankind, the printing press has
enabled man to repeat in a spiritual
sense the divine drama Of creation.
And many an ink-begotten hero i3 as
living and effectual an inspiration to
noble deeds as though he had lived
and breathed in human form. It is,
moreover, by means Of their typograph-
ical cerements that the real heroes of
every land and cline have escaped OBJ
livion. Better than all the promises of
Immortality offered to Ulysses by Calyp-
so has been the immortality conferred
upon him and his comrades by the no
less magical wand Of the printer. Were
our mother island sunk beneath the
sea" wrote Lowell, Shakespeare would
still be an immortal England" On
the other hand, candor compels the
admission that sinful man has made
use OF type-as of every other inven-
tion-for base and ignoble ends But
the most pig-headed pessimist would
hardly maintain that the evil results
thus obtained could be more than an
1nfnitesimal part of the good ones.
For the printing press has demonstrate
ed In a most convincing manner that
only what is good and beautiful is per-
manent. Every vile and morbid book
has died, or eventually will die, of it's
own diseases, till at length authors and
publishers will have learned the folly
of printing such things. 1t is not mere
fancy that sees in the steady external
improvement that has been made on
the first book models a symbol of an
internal progress in the matter between
the covers Of bookdom. However much
antiquarian rapture we may feel when
We buy worm-eaten old book in fif-
teenth century print, we cannot deny
that in their superb typographical ward
robes the books of to-day as far sur
pass the first Gutenbergen attempts as
the dainty tinted gowns of a modern
belle outvie the impromptu makeshift
of our 11g-leaved mother Eve. Con-
corning the respective claims of Guten-
berg and Roster to the discovery of
movable types, We have no desire to
bubble. If they had not invented
something of the kind somebody else
would have done so about the same
time or little later. Be that as 1t
may, in recognition of his service to
mankind we are willing to pledge Mr..
Gutenberg's health-he surely would
excuse us from drinking it unless we
followed it up by swallowing a blotter
in brlmming bumper of ink.