A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume II (of 2)
TekstEXCLUSIVE PRIVILEGE FOR PRINTING BOOKS
I do not mean in this article to give a complete catalogue of all the books printed under a privilege in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, for such a list would be attended with very little utility. All I wish is to contribute something towards answering the question, What are the oldest privileges granted to books?
The oldest known at present is that granted in the year 1490, by Henry bishop of Bamberg, to the following book: Liber Missalis secundum ordinem ecclesiæ Bambergensis – Anno incarnationis dominice MCCCCXC. nono vero kal. April. – In civitate Babenbergn. per magistrum Johannem Sensenschmidt, prefate civitatis incolam, et Heinr. Petzensteiner. This privilege was first noticed by Panzer, in his History of the Nuremberg editions of the Bible, and afterwards by Mr. Am Ende, in Meusel’s Collection for enlarging Historical Knowledge. The latter says, “One may readily believe that this bishop was not the inventor of such privileges, and that they are consequently of much greater antiquity than has hitherto been supposed.” Mr. Am Ende mentions also a privilege of the year 1491, to a work called Hortus Sanitatis, typis Iacobi Meydenbach… Impressum autem est hoc ipsum in incl. civ. Moguntina … sub Archipraesulatu rever. et benigniss. principis et D. D. Bertholdi, archiep. Moguntinensis ac princ. elector. cujus felicissimo auspicio graditur, recipitur et auctorisatur. This, says Mr. Am Ende, may allude to a privilege, and perhaps not. For my part, I conjecture that it refers only to a permission to print, granted in consequence of the institution of book-censors by the archbishop Berthold, in the year 1486.
The oldest Venetian privilege at present known, is of the year 1491, found by M. Pütter to the following work: Foenix Magistri Petri memoriae Ravennatis. The Colophon is Bernardinus de Choris de Cremona impressor delectus impressit. Venetias die X Ianuarii MCCCCXCI. The book is in quarto, and has the privilege on both the last pages. There is a Venetian privilege also of the year 1492, to Senecæ Tragediæ cum commento… Cum privilegio ne quis audeat hoc opus cum hoc commento imprimere, sub pena in eo contenta, Venetiis per Lazarum Issarda de Saliviano 1492, die XII. Decembris.
The oldest Papal privilege hitherto known is of the year 1505, to Hervei Britonis in IV Petri Lombardi Sententiarum volumina, scripta subtilissima.
In the year 1495, Aldus published the works of Aristotle, at the end of the first part of which we find the following notice: “Concessum est eidem Aldo inventori ab illustrissimo senatu Veneto, ne quis queat imprimere neque hunc librum, neque caeteros quos is ipse impresserit; neque ejus uti invento.” The last words allude to the Greek types which were employed in printing the Aldine editions of the Greek classics.
The following among other early privileges are quoted by Pütter1278 and Hoffmann1279—
1495. A Milanese, by duke Louis Sforza, to Michael Ferner and Eustachius Silber for I. A. Campani Opera.
1501. Privilegium sodalitatis Celticæ a senatu Romani imperii impetratum, to Conrade Celtes’ edition of the works of Hroswitha.
1506. A papal, of pope Julius II., to Evangelista Tosino the bookseller, for Ptolomaei Geographia.
1507. A French, of Louis XII. to Antoine Verard.
1510. The first Imperial, to Lectura aurea semper Domini abbatis antiqui.
1512. An Imperial, to Rosslin’s Swangere Frauwen Rosegarten.
1527. A privilege from the duke of Saxony to the edition of the New Testament by Emser.
Anderson remarks on the year 1590, that the first exclusive patent, for printing a book in England, which occurs in Rymer’s Fœdera1280, was granted in the above year by queen Elizabeth, to Richard Weight of Oxford, for a Translation of Tacitus. I am much astonished that Anderson, who was so often obliged to use Rymer’s Fœdera, and who seems indeed to have consulted it with attention, should have overlooked the oldest patents which are to be found in that collection. In that laborious work, so important to those who wish to be acquainted with the history of British literature, Ames’ Typographical Antiquities, there are privileges of still greater antiquity. The oldest which I observed in this work are the following: —
1510. The history of king Boccus … printed at London by Thomas Godfry. Cum privilegio regali.
1518. Oratio Richardi Pacei … Impressa per Richardum Pynson, regium impressorem, cum privilegio a rege indulto, ne quis hanc orationem intra biennium in regno Angliæ imprimat, aut alibi impressam et importatam in eodem regno Angliæ vendat.
Other works printed cum gratia et privilegio occur 1520, 1521, 1525, 1528, 1530, &c.
In the year 1483, when the well-known act was made against foreign merchants, foreigners however were permitted to import books and manuscripts, and also to print them in the kingdom; but this liberty was afterwards revoked by Henry VIII., in the year 1533, by an order which may be found in Ames. In 1538, Henry issued an order respecting the printing of bibles; and in 1542, he gave a bookseller an exclusive privilege during four years for that purpose1281.
With a view of finding the oldest Spanish privilege, I consulted a variety of works, and among others Specimen Bibliothecae Hispano-Majansianae, but I met with none older than that to the following book: Aelii Antonii Nebrissensis Introductiones in Latinam Grammaticen. Logronii Cantabrorum Vasconum urbe nobilissima; anno salutis millesimo quingentesimo decimo. fol. That privileges to books were usual in Poland, has been shown by Am Ende, in Meusel’s Collections before-mentioned.
CATALOGUES OF BOOKS
The first printers printed books at their own expense, and sold them themselves. It was necessary therefore that they should have large capitals. Paper and all other materials, as well as labour, were in the infancy of the art exceedingly dear for those periods; and on the other hand the purchasers of books were few, partly because the price of them was too high, and partly because, knowledge being less widely diffused, they were not so generally read as at present. For these reasons many of the principal printers, notwithstanding their learning and ingenuity, became poor1282. In this manner my countrymen Conrade Sweynheim and Arnold Pannarz, who were the first, and for a long time the only printers at Rome, a city which on many accounts, particularly in the sixteenth century, might be called the first in Christendom, were obliged, after the number of the volumes in their warehouses amounted to 12,475, to solicit support from the pope1283. In the course of time this profession was divided, and there arose booksellers. It appears that the printers themselves first gave up the bookselling part of the business, and retained only that of printing; at least this is said to have been the case with that well-known bookseller John Rainmann, who was born at Oehringen, and resided at Augsburg1284. He was at first a printer and letter-founder, and from him Aldus purchased his types. Books of his printing may be found from the year 1508 to 1524; and in many he is styled the celebrated German bookseller. About the same period lived the booksellers Jos. Burglin and George Diemar. Sometimes there were rich people of all conditions, particularly eminent merchants, who caused books which they sold to be printed at their own expense. In this manner that learned man Henry Stephens was printer at Paris to Ulric Fugger at Augsburg, from whom he received a salary for printing the many manuscripts which he purchased. In some editions, from the year 1558 to 1567, he subscribes himself Henricus Stephanus, illustris viri Hulderici Fuggeri typographus. In the like manner also, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, a society of learned and rich citizens of Augsburg, at the head of whom was Marx Welser, the city-steward, printed a great number of books, which had commonly at the end these words, ad insigne pinus. Printing therefore thus gave rise to a new and important branch of trade, that of bookselling, which was established in Germany, chiefly at Frankfort on the Maine, where, particularly at the time of the fairs, there were several large bookseller’s shops in that street which still retains the name of Book-street.
George Willer, whom some improperly call Viller, and others Walter, a bookseller at Augsburg, who kept a very large shop, and frequented the Frankfort fairs, first fell upon the plan of publishing every fair a catalogue of all the new books, adding the size, and publishing names. Le Mire, better known under the name of Miræus1285, says, that catalogues were first printed in the year 1554; but Labbe1286, Reimann1287, and Heumann1288, who took their information from Le Mire, make the year, perhaps erroneously, to be 1564. Willer’s catalogues were printed till the year 1592, by Nicol. Bassæus, printer at Frankfort. Other booksellers however must have soon published catalogues of the like kind, though that of Willer continued a long time to be the principal1289.
In all these catalogues, which are in quarto, and not paged, the following order is observed. The Latin books occupy the first place, beginning with the Protestant theological works, perhaps because Willer was a Lutheran; then come the Catholic; and after these, books of jurisprudence, medicine, philosophy, poetry, and music. The second place is assigned to German books, which are arranged in the same manner.
In the year 1604, the general Easter Catalogue was printed with a permission from government.
After this the Leipsic booksellers began not only to reprint the Frankfort catalogues, but to enlarge them with many books which had not been brought to the fairs in that city. I have, dated 1600, a catalogue of all the books on sale in Book-street, Frankfort, and also of the books published at Leipsic, which have not been brought to Frankfort; with the permission of his highness the elector of Saxony to those new works which have appeared at Leipsic. Printed at Leipsic, by Abraham Lamberg; and to be had at his shop. On the September catalogue of the same year, it is said that it is printed from the Frankfort copy, with additions. I find an imperial privilege, for the first time, on the Frankfort September catalogue of 1616. Some imperial permissions however may be of an earlier date; for I have not seen a complete series of these catalogues.
Reimmann says that, after Willer’s death, the catalogue was published by the Leipsic bookseller Henning Grosse, and by his son and grandson. The council of Frankfort caused several regulations to be issued respecting catalogues, an account of which may be seen in Orth’s work on the Imperial Fairs at Frankfort1290. After the business of bookselling was drawn from Frankfort to Leipsic, occasioned principally by the restrictions to which it was subjected at the former by the censors, no more catalogues were printed there; and the shops in Book-street were gradually converted into taverns.
In perusing these old catalogues one cannot help being astonished at the sudden and great increase of books; and when one reflects that a great many of them no longer exist, this perishableness of human labours will excite the same sensations as those which arise in the mind when one reads in a church-yard the names and titles of persons long since mouldered into dust. In the sixteenth century there were few libraries; and these, which did not contain many books, were in monasteries, and consisted principally of theological, philosophical and historical works, with a few however on jurisprudence and medicine; while those which treated of agriculture, manufactures and trade, were thought unworthy of the notice of the learned, and of being preserved in large collections. The number of these works was, nevertheless, far from being inconsiderable; and at any rate many of them would have been of great use, as they would have served to illustrate the instructive history of the arts. Catalogues which might have given occasion to inquiries after books, that may be still somewhere preserved, have suffered the fate of tombstones, which, being wasted and crumbled to pieces by the destroying hand of time, become no longer legible. A complete series of them, perhaps, is nowhere to be found.
This loss might in some measure be supplied by two works, were they not now exceedingly scarce. I mean those of Cless and Draudius, who, by the desire of some booksellers, collected together, as Georg1291 did at a later period, all the catalogues published at the different fairs in different years. The work of Cless has the following title: – Unius sæculi ejusque virorum litteratorum monumentis tum florentissimi, tum fertilissimi, ab anno 1500 ad 1602 nundinarum autumnalium inclusive, elenchus consummatissimus – desumtus partim ex singularum nundinarum catalogis, partim ex bibliothecis. Auctore, Joanne Clessio, Wineccensi, Hannoio, philosopho ac medico1292. By the editor’s preface it appears that the first edition was published in 1592. The order is almost the same as that observed by Willer in his catalogues.
The work of Draudius, which was printed in several quarto volumes, for the first time, in 1611, and afterwards in 1625, is far larger, more complete, and more methodical. I have never seen a perfect copy of either edition; but perhaps the following information may afford some satisfaction to those who are fond of bibliography. One part, which I consider as the first, has the title of Bibliotheca Classica, sive Catalogus officinalis, in quo singuli singularum facultatum ac professionum libri, qui in quavis fere lingua extant, recensentur; usque ad annum 1624 inclusive. Auctore M. Georgio Draudio. It contains Latin works on theology, jurisprudence, medicine, history, geography and politics. The copy in the library of our university ends at page 1304, which has however a catchword that seems to indicate a deficiency. The second part is entitled Bibliotheca Classica, sive Catalogus officinalis, in quo philosophici artiumque adeo humaniorum, poetici etiam et musici libri usque ad annum 1624 continentur.
This part, containing Latin books also, begins at page 1298, and ends with page 1654, which is followed by an index of all the authors mentioned. A smaller volume of 302 pages, without an index, has for title, Bibliotheca Exotica, sive Catalogus officinalis librorum peregrinis linguis usualibus scriptorum; and a fourth part, forming 759 pages besides an index of the authors, is called, Bibliotheca Librorum Germanicorum Classica; that is, A Catalogue of all the books printed in the German language till the year 1625. By the indices, and the proper arrangement of the matter, the use of this work is much facilitated. I must however observe that the oldest catalogues had the same faults as those of the present time, and that these have been copied by Draudius. Many books are mentioned which were never printed, and many titles, names and dates, are given incorrectly; but Draudius, nevertheless, is well worth the attention of any one who may be inclined to employ his time and ingenuity on the history of literature.
[Towards the end of the seventeenth and especially during the eighteenth century, book-catalogues of every description multiplied rapidly. Their progress is copiously treated of in Nichols’s Literary Anecdotes, vol. iii. pp. 608–693, to which the reader is referred. Perhaps the most remarkable bookseller’s-catalogue ever printed is Mr. Henry Bohn’s so-called Guinea Catalogue, which is upwards of six inches thick, and contains, in about 2000 pages, merely the details of his own stock.]
RIBBON-LOOM
Among the inventions, which, by lessening labour, render a great number of workmen unnecessary, and consequently deprive many of bread, and which, with whatever ingenuity they may be contrived, have been considered as hurtful, and were for a long time suppressed by governments, may be reckoned the ribbon-loom. In its general construction, this machine approaches very near to that of the common weaving loom; but the workman, instead of weaving one piece, or one ribbon, as is the case when the latter is used, can, on the former when it has all the necessary apparatus, weave sixteen or twenty pieces at the same time, and even of different patterns. Such a loom is so made, that the workman can move the batten as in the common loom, towards him and from him, and also to the right and left, with all the shuttles it contains; or, it is furnished with certain machinery below, which can be moved by a boy unacquainted with the art of weaving, and which keeps the whole loom with all its shuttles in motion. Looms of the former kind are certainly much simpler than those of the latter, and in all probability are older. To the first kind belongs the loom at Erfurt, and that which was lately brought thence to Göttingen. Of the other kind there are two at Berlin; and some of them may be seen in many other places. The art has been discovered also of causing such looms to be driven by water; and an instance of this may be found, as I have been told, in the neighbourhood of Iserlohe1293. The proprietors however in most places keep the construction of their looms a secret, and, as far as appears, no complete description or figure of them has ever been published. There is reason to believe that this invention is as yet little used in France; no mention at least is made of it in the Encyclopedie, where, however, the common loom of the ribbon-weavers and lace-weavers is fully represented with all its parts in ten copper-plates.
Attempts were made in Europe to suppress this invention, as was the case with printing in Turkey. But without here inquiring whether inventions may not save too much labour, and be therefore hurtful, as Montesquieu affirms, or whether it would be possible to suppress them throughout all Europe, I shall restrict myself to the history of the ribbon-loom as far as information is to be collected on the subject.
We are told by M. Jacobson, that it is believed the Swiss invented such looms above a hundred years ago; but I do not know any grounds upon which this conjecture can be supported. To me it appears much more probable that this invention had its rise in the Netherlands or Germany, either about the end of the sixteenth or beginning of the seventeenth century. The oldest account with which I am acquainted seems to be in favour of Germany and the sixteenth century. Lancellotti, in a work1294 published at Venice in 1636, says “Anthony Moller of Dantzic relates, that he saw in that city about fifty years before a very ingenious machine, on which, from four to six pieces could be wove at the same time; but as the council were afraid that by this invention a great many workmen might be reduced to beggary, they suppressed it and caused the inventor to be privately strangled or drowned.” Who this Anthony Moller was I do not know; but that he saw a ribbon-loom at Dantzic is beyond all doubt. If the date of the printing of the book be taken as the time in which Lancellotti wrote, there is reason to believe that there was a ribbon-loom at Dantzic about the year 1586; but it appears to me that the book was written in 1629, which would bring us to the year 1579.
The next oldest information with which I am acquainted, is that given by Boxhorn, who says, “About twenty years ago some persons in this city (Leyden) invented a weaving-machine on which one workman could with ease make more cloth than several others in the same space of time. This gave rise to rioting among the weavers, and to such loud complaints, that the use of this machine was at length prohibited by the magistrates.” According to this account, Leyden was the place of the invention; but, in order to determine the time, it will be necessary to attend to the following circumstances. Boxhorn’s Institutiones Politicæ have been often printed, as for example, at Amsterdam 1663, in 12mo. Boxhorn read lectures on the Institutiones Politicæ, and gave verbal illustrations of them to his scholars, one of whom, in the year 1641, carried a fairly written copy of the latter to Germany, and gave them to Professor C. F. Franckenstein, who caused them to be printed for the first time at Leipsic in 1658, and again in 1665, 12mo. The passage above-quoted is to be found in the illustrations which are appended. Hence there is reason to conclude that the ribbon-loom was known in Holland about the year 1621.
It is some confirmation of Boxhorn’s account, that the States-General, as early as the 11th of August 1623, if they did not totally prohibit the use of the ribbon-loom, as commonly asserted, at any rate greatly circumscribed it. The proclamation for that purpose may be found in the Groot Placaet-Boeck1295, a valuable collection published at the Hague in seven large folio volumes, between the years 1658 and 1746. Nothing further however is found there respecting the history of ribbon-looms, which are called Lint-molens, than that they had been in use for several years to the great injury and even total ruin of many thousands of workmen, who were accustomed to weave ribbons on the common loom. This prohibition was renewed on the 14th of March 1639, and again on the 17th of September 1648, as appears by the same work1296. On the 5th of December 1661, the use of them was extended a little longer, and defined with more precision1297; but as far as I have been able to find, no other regulations were made respecting these machines in the Netherlands.
The council of Nuremberg, it is said, prohibited the use of them in 1664, as is mentioned in the Hanau work, which I shall soon have occasion to quote.
On the 24th of December, the same year, ribbon-looms were prohibited in the Spanish Netherlands. In the proclamation for that purpose, it is stated that a great number of articles manufactured on these looms were privately imported from Viane and Culenburg.
In the year 1665, there was to be seen at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, a loom which of itself wove all kinds of lace, tape, &c., provided the silk or yarn was properly arranged in the usual manner; but if a thread happened to break, it was necessary that some one should again join it by means of a knot1298. The year following, some person in that city applied not only to the council, but even to the emperor, for permission to establish such a loom, but was not able to obtain it.
In 1676 the ribbon-loom was prohibited at Cologne, and the same year some disturbance took place in consequence of its being introduced into England1299. It is probable that Anderson1300 alludes to this loom when he says, speaking of the above year, “As was also brought from Holland to London, the weavers’ loom-engine, then called the Dutch loom-engine.” He however praises the machine without describing it; nor does he mention that it occasioned any commotion.
The lace-weavers in Germany, but in particular the councils of Augsburg and Cologne, applied to Frederick Casimir, count of Hanau, who had great influence in the empire, and requested that he would endeavour to procure a general prohibition of ribbon-looms throughout all Germany; and the count accordingly presented a representation on this subject to the electors and states.
On the 8th of January 1681, it was declared by Imperial authority that a prohibition of ribbon-looms was both useful and necessary. This was followed by an imperial decree, dated January the 5th, 1685, and on the first of September following it was strengthened by a conclusum in senatu of the council of Frankfort.
The council of Hamburg, it is said, ordered a loom to be publicly burnt; and the emperor Charles VI. caused the prohibition of 1685 to be renewed on the 19th of February 1719; though some mercantile people made considerable opposition to this measure. A general prohibition was likewise issued in the electorate of Saxony, on the 29th of July 1720. All these coercive means however were ineffectual; and the ribbon-loom, being found useful, has now become common.
In the year 1718, the first loom of this kind was brought from Holland to Charlottenburg on the Spree; but Nicolai, in his Description of Berlin, says that this circumstance took place in the year 1728. The workmen were then engaged from foreign countries; and the loom was supported at the king’s expense. The electorate of Saxony also, in the year 1765, revoked its prohibition, and permitted such looms to be publicly used. In the rescript dated March the 20th, it is said, that as things were much changed, and as other German states had annulled the prohibitions against ribbon-looms, it was induced to grant full liberty to the lace-weavers to employ freely and publicly in future, ribbon and lace-looms, and to manufacture all kinds of ribbons and other articles of the like kind that could be wove on them. It stated further, that the lace-weavers should give notice whether any of them wished to establish ribbon-looms, and how soon they could get them ready for work; that such of them as did not choose to be at the expense, should for every loom constructed receive a certain sum, besides being admitted a member of the company; and that three months after the publication of this order, fifty rix-dollars would be given, by way of premium, for every loom on which from twelve to fifteen pieces of silk-ribbon could be wove; and thirty rix-dollars for every loom employed to weave ferret and articles of woollen1301.
[The profitable application of steam-power to silk weaving was long considered to be almost impossible; so much time being consumed in the handling and trimming of the silk, in proportion to the time that the loom is in motion, there was consequently a waste of power. A small factory was built in 1831, for the purpose of making the experiment on ribbons. It was, however, burnt during a disturbance relating to prices; and though the act was disclaimed by weavers in general, the feeling amongst them was so strong against the employment of inanimate labour whilst their own was superabundant, that the scheme was given up. Within a few years there were numerous steam-factories at work at Congleton, Leek, Derby and other places, which made large quantities of plain ribbons, chiefly black sarsenets. The Coventry manufacturers, alarmed for the interests of their trade, formed in 1836 a steam-company, and erected a large factory, but difficulties arose as to the apportionment of the power among the different parties, and it has never yet been fitted up for its original purpose. Another large factory was soon after built, and applied to the making of figured ribbons, but owing to the failure of the parties, the experiment was not in this instance fairly tested. One experiment on a smaller scale had some success. The factories of the North and of Derby have proved the advantage of steam-power as applied to plain ribbons. At Congleton there were in 1838, 254 power-looms engaged in the manufacture of plain silk, a few black satin and some plain coloured ribbons; at Leek there were 100 employed in the same way, and at Derby 233. In these, each loom is tended by one pair of hands, which pick up and keep the machinery in order: the gain consists, not in a more rapid motion of the shuttles, the delicacy of the materials not allowing of this; but in the shooting down being seldom interrupted during the picking up, as in hand-loom weaving; in the greater regularity of the fabric, and also in the addition of from one-fifth to one-third more shuttles, for which one workman suffices, the loom being so constructed as to enable him to reach from the front over the batten to the warps behind. But when two pairs of hands are required for one loom, as is the case with the Jacquard loom, one before to tend the work and one behind to pick up, the advantage is much lessened. Steam-loom weaving is undoubtedly making great progress notwithstanding all disadvantages: in 1840, the steam-factory at Coventry, which formerly failed, was again at work under fresh parties, who were making both plain and fancy ribbons with a strong probability of ultimate success. The fine factory belonging to the Steam Company, which is now occupied by broad silk steam-looms, has one ribbon-loom at work; and in one other instance, in Coventry, Jacquard steam-looms are employed in making light figured ribbons with great beauty and precision, and in this case it is found that one man is able to tend the front and another the back of two looms. There can be little doubt that the time is approaching when steam will be the chief motive-power of the ribbon as of other manufacturing districts, and that the strength of English machinery will be called for to enter into competition with French taste.
Coventry is the great city for the manufacture of ribbons in England; in 1838, the number of persons employed there was 6000 or 7000, and in the rural parishes, 10,000 or 11,0001302.]