Journal of Proceedings and Addresses of the Annual Meeting (Volume 9)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899. Excerpt: ... THE THREE CHIEF ALLIES OF AMERICAN CIVILIZA-TION--THH PRINTING PRESS; THE PUB-LIC SCHOOL; AND THE RAILROAD. BY ALEXANDER HOGG, EDITOR OF THE TEXAS PACIFIC JOURNAL. Mr. Chairman: While we are told that the whole economy of nature and art is comprised under the three heads--transmutation, transformation, and transportation--the printing press alone embraces two of these forms. The conception, by transmutation, becomes an idea, by transformation becomes a word, and the printing press fixes the entity and identity of the word, and we have the spoken transformed into the written language. Not to go too far back, nor too much into historic detail, we find that stamping on playing cards, by means of blocks, antedates printing--that this was practiced by the Chinese, the authors of so many other useful inventions; that in 1420 Lawrence Caster, of Harlem, produced the first entire book from wooden blocks, each page being a single engraving. To John Gutenburg, of Mayence, belongs the honor of having invented movable types and casting them in metal. The invention of the printing press follows close after that of movable type (1440). In 1457 the first printed book from movable type, a Latin Psalter, appeared; in 14(51 a Latin Bible, and in 14(53 a German Bible, were given to the world. Adolph, of Nassau, seeing the influence that would be wielded by this new engine, destroyed the printing establishment of Mayence in 14(52. But the art of all arts preservative survived. Thus, says Ridpath, in the middle of the fifteenth century were the means provided for the emancipation of thought and the universal enlightenment of men. To the trembling Belshazzar of Superstition, the shadow of the printing press was the handwriting on the wall which foretokened the subversion ...