Laurens Janszoon Coster (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈlʌurəɲ ˈɕɑnsoːŋ ˈkɔstər]; c. 1370 in Haarlem – c. 1440), or Laurens Jansz Koster, is the purported inventor of a printing press from Haarlem. He allegedly invented printing simultaneously with Johannes Gutenberg and was regarded by some in the Netherlands well into the 20th century as having invented printing first.
Hadrianus Junius, otherwise known as Adriaen de Jonghe, wrote this story around 1567 in his book Batavia, published only in 1588, and was quoted by Cornelis de Bie. Now known primarily for his Emblemata, Junius moved to Haarlem in 1550, and wrote several books, acting shortly as the rector of the Latin School there, as the city physician and as historiographer of the States of Holland (as of 1565/66). His story was echoed by his friend Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert, who started a printing business in Haarlem in 1560. Later Samuel Ampzing (with the help of Petrus Scriverius) repeated the story in Lavre-Kranz Voor Lavrens Koster Van Haerlem, Eerste Vinder vande Boek-Druckerye (1628) with illustrations of the invention. According to Junius, sometime in the 1420s, Coster was in the Haarlemmerhout carving letters from bark for the amusement of his grandchildren, and observed that the letters left impressions on the sand. He proceeded to invent a new type of ink that did not run, and he began a printing company based on his invention with a primitive typesetting arrangement using moveable type. Since the Haarlemmerhout was burned during a siege by the Kennemers in 1426 during the Hook and Cod wars, this must have been early in the 1420s. Using wooden letters at first, he later used lead and tin movable type. His company prospered and grew. He is said to have printed several books including Speculum Humanae Salvationis with several assistants including the letter cutter Johann Fust, and it was this letter cutter Fust (often spelled Faust) who, when Laurens was nearing death, broke his promise of secrecy and stole his presses and type and took them to Mainz where he started his own printing company.
An excerpt from, "The Art of Printing in the Dutch East Indies: Laurens Janszoon Coster as Colonial Hero" By Lisa Kuitert, Quaerendo, June 2020:
In the Netherlands, and elsewhere, too, Laurens Janszoon Coster of Haarlem, and not Gutenberg, was long thought to have been the inventor of the art of printing. The myth—for that is what it was—was only definitively repudiated at the end of the nineteenth century, though some continued to believe in Coster until their dying breath. The Coster myth was deployed to give the history of the Netherlands status and international prestige. This article concerns the extent to which Coster’s supposed invention was known in the Dutch East Indies—today’s Indonesia, a Dutch colony at that time—and what its significance was there. After all, heroes, national symbols and traditions, whether invented or not, are the building blocks of cultural nationalism. Is this also true for Laurens Janszoon Coster in his colonial context?
. . .The name Laurens Janszoon Coster (sometimes spelled as Koster) probably does not mean much to anyone outside the Netherlands—it might not be very well known in the Netherlands, either. Except, of course, in his place of birth, Haarlem, where a large statue of Coster adorns the central square. In 1823, things were different. Laurens Janszoon Coster had been confidently regarded for centuries as the inventor of printing. It was not the German Johannes Gutenberg, nor the Italian Panfilo Castaldi, nor the Fleming Dirk Martens of Aalst, nor the Frenchman Nicolas Jenson, but this simple man from Haarlem who invented printing years before Gutenberg. According to the legend, Coster dropped a letter cut from wood on the sand and its imprint gave him the idea that the same could be done on paper. There are several statues in Haarlem of this man who is now thought never to have existed, let alone to have invented the art of printing. There is now no doubt whatsoever that Gutenberg was the first in Europe to employ the art of printing—hundreds of years, though, after printing with movable type was practiced in China and Korea. The technique only reached the Low Countries after Gutenberg’s invention, by way of printers such as Dirk Martens of Aalst and Johan van Westfalen who had learned about the new method not in Mainz or Strasbourg but in Venice, and had subsequently returned to the Low Countries. Where, then, does the story about Coster come from?
