Talk:Laurens Janszoon Coster

History or myth

"In fact, it is far from certain if Mr. Coster really existed." Although it's basically always mentioned Coster may or may not have been the first to invent movable type, I never heard or read anybody doubt whether or not he ever actually existed before. A quick search online didn't help either. It's probably a good idea to point to a source about that part. Retodon8 19:15, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

I removed the part about the doubt, as I haven't been able to find a single mention of it anywhere. Retodon8 22:35, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I think we should state in the article that there is no consensus on whether or not Coster really existed. A Dutch text clarifying the issue online can be found here: http://www.ru.nl/ahc/vg/html/vg000182.htm

The historical museum in Haarlem, het Haarlems Historisch Museum uses the same formula: he might have existed, or might not, but most certainly didn't invent the printing press. It's still a nice story of course, as I will acknowledges as an ex-Haarlem citizen. Guus 01:53, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

He most certainly did not invent the printing press, which had been around for a long time before him. The Dutch believe he invented moveable type, but it has been suggested elsewhere that he worked for Gutenburg (or someone associated with him) for a period and then took the idea back to Holland and claimed he had invented it. It is unlikely that a statue would have been erected if he had not existed. 172.189.150.80 03:10, 19 January 2006

Well Hans Brinker got a statue. There's also The Little Mermaid, and I suspect there may be more, ones closes to Coster's history than my examples. (You can use 4 tildes (~) to sign your posts; I manually added it for you now.) Retodon8 19:32, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Reaction to the edit by Gun Powder Ma. Of course there is a major difference between printing by Gutenberg and the "legendary" printing by Coster. Gutenberg was able to print complete books; if Coster did perform printing, then it were probably a kind of pamphlets or something like that, not complete books. Interesting is that about twenty year ago there has been an auction (probably at Sotheby's ) of a piece of paper (less than a half page), that says it has been printed in Haarlem in the thirties of the fifteenth century (I do not remember the exact year). Due to this date it could have been printed by Coster, but it does not carry his name. Unfortunately, I can nowhere discover a reference to this auctioned piece of printed paper. Maybe, someone does know the reference to it.Robvhoorn (talk) 10:05, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

It's incredibly hard to eradicate such falsifications of history. Coster is a myth, created in the 16th century in Hadrianus Junius' Batavia. No serious historian still believes this myth. Two men in Haarlem during the 15th century wore the name Laurens Janszoon. The first one (1370-1439) was a merchant, he never used the last name Coster. The second one (1410-1484) did use this last name and was the owner of a house at Grote Markt 33 in Haarlem (demolished in 1929), close to the building that's currently known as the Costerhuis (Grote Markt 25). He was way too young to be responsible for the mythical invention in 1423. Scientifical sources can be found in the Dutch Wikipedia lemma and the corresponding talk page. I'm Dutch, I doubt if my reaction is worded well enough to paste into the lemma, I hope that a native English speaker will correct it. AFAIK there are no scientific sources about LJC in English. Maggy (talk) 15:32, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

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