| Description | Wanley responds to an extract of a letter from Charles Ellis published in Philosophical Transactions as 'An extract of a letter to Dr Edward Tyson from the Reverend Mr. Charles Ellis, giving an account of a young lady, born deaf and dumb, taught to speak. That costerus first invented printing, anno 1430. Of the physick garden at Amsterdam, and the chamber of rarities at boln of a monstrons birth. Of the qnarry at Maestricht. Fr. linus's dyals at Leige. The cachot or rooms cut in the rock of the castle in Namur. Sir Jo. Mandevil's tomb at Leige. The fricsland boy with letters in his eye'. Wanley writes: 'What this Gentleman says about the Books Printed at Harlaem by Laurence Koster, agreeing so well with the account given by Theodore Schrevelius and others leaves us (who take it for granted that Mr Ellis's observation is accurate, and the Dates true) little or no room to doubt whether the Honor of Invention be due to this or the other Cities, whose writers have so eagerly contended for it; since none of them have pretended to shew any book printed so soon as AD 1430, or 1432, or near that time.'
Subject: Printing / History
Read to the Royal Society on 27 October 1703
Published in Philosophical Transactions as 'Some observation concering the invention and progress of printing, to the Year 1465. Occasioned by by the Reverend Mr. Ellis's letter, exhibited in Phil Trans. no. 286. pag. 1416' |