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Coster and Grote Kerk - Haarlem

"This is Laurens Janszoon Coster. Actually, he's a statue. He is the perfect metaphor for the smugness of the Haarlemmer. Ok Coster may have lived in Haarlem or not. He may have been a printer of books in Haarlem or not. But he certainly did not invent bookprinting, which is what he got his statue for.

 

By the way Gutenberg didn't invent printing either: He invented foundry of type. And hence bookprinting as we know it. True. But the Chinese and Koreans are the real inventors of the printing process with blocks and loose metal type.

Coster is a romantic myth."

 

From:

www.xs4all.nl/~wiskerke/html/haarlem2.html

 

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Uploaded on December 21, 2005
Taken on December 18, 2005