Given the text's mention of "unfixed" dates, "alleged discoveries," and disputed attributions (like those rejected by Passavant), what inherent challenges do historians face when attempting to establish definitive timelines and origins for significant technological breakthroughs, and what does this reveal about the nature of historical evidence itself?

From the book

hat they have been dissatisfied with his statements and have tried to fill up the gaps in the evidence with conjectures. But they have not made the legend any more credible. The exact nature and date of the invention, the name of the inventor, his method of making types, the books he printed, the thief who stole his process, the fate of his printing office, the total disappearance of the knowledge of the new art—these and other features of the positive statement first made by Junius are enveloped in as complete a mystery as they were when Batavia was written. With all its inconsistencies and…

he invention of Coster are most strikingly illustrated in its chronology. ​ The Statue of Coster in the Doctors' Garden. [From Seiz.] ​ Seiz has not told us where he obtained this curious information, but we shall make no mistake if we attribute it to an imagination disordered by national pride. His chronology is so absurd that serious criticism would be a waste of time. Notwithstanding the strong efforts of Seiz to remove the impression created by the contradictory accounts of his predecessors, the citizens of Haarlem seemed to be involved in ​ greater doubts than ever about the chronology…

an, thought that these differences could be most satisfactorily adjusted by fixing the date midway between the extremes. He was not in the possession of any newly discovered facts, and had no authority for the arbitrary selection, but this incompetency did not prevent him from publishing a portrait of Coster, with an inscription which made the year 1430 the date of the invention. To the thinking men of Haarlem the assumptions of Boxhorn were as unsatisfactory as those of Junius and Scriverius. There was an air of improbability, or at least of uncertainty, about the statements of all the…

y was entertained in 1796, but his vague notions about printing from stone did not assume a practical shape before 1798. He did not receive, and perhaps was not entitled to, his patent before 1800. 34. The exact size of the Assyrian cylinder illustrated on this page is seven inches high and three inches wide at each end. 64. On page 447, the date of the erection of this stone by Wittig is put down at 1508, which is the date given by Bernard and by many others. But Wetter, from whose book this statement was taken, knowing that Wittig was dead in 1507, altered the date to 1507. Helbig does not…

s unwillingly accepted the unauthorized tradition of presswork by friction, but he has candidly stated its difficulties. "Considering the thickness of the paper on which the block-books are printed — if I may apply this term to them — and the thin-bodied ink which has been used, I am at a loss to conceive how the early wood engravers have contrived to take off their impressions so correctly; for in all the block-books which I have seen, where friction has evidently been the means employed to obtain the impression, I have noticed only two subjects in which the lines appear double in…