arrangement with Frederick Riedel,
who furnished the necessary capital for carrying on the business of a
printer and bookseller. Koenig alleges that his reason for adopting
this step was to raise sufficient money to enable him to carry out his
plans for the improvement of printing.

The business, however, did not succeed, as we find him in the following
year carrying on a printing trade at Mayence. Having sold this
business, he removed to Suhl in Thuringia. Here he was occupied with a
stereotyping process, suggested by what he had read about the art as
perfected in England by Earl Stanhope. He also contrived an improved
press, provided with a moveable carriage, on which the types were
placed, with inking rollers, and a new mechanical method of taking off
the impression by flat pressure.

Koenig brought his new machine under the notice of the leading printers
in Germany, but they would not undertake to use it. The plan seemed to
them too complicated and costly. He tried to enlist men of capital in
his scheme, but they all turned a deaf ear to him. He went from town
to town, but could obtain no encouragement whatever. Besides,
industrial enterprise in Germany was then in a measure paralysed by the
impending war with France, and men of capital were naturally averse to
risk their money on what seemed a merely speculative undertaking.

Finding no sympathisers or helpers at home, Koenig next turned his
attention abroad. England was then, as now, the refuge of inventors
who could not find the means of bringing out their schemes elsewhere;
and to England he wistfully turned his eyes. In the meantime, however,
his inventive ability having become known, an offer was made to him by
the Russian Government to proceed to St. Petersburg and organise the
State printing-office there. The invitation was accepted, and Koenig
proceeded to St. Petersburg in the spring of 1806. But the official
difficulties thrown in his way were very great, and so disgusted him,
that he decided to throw up his appointment, and try his fortune in
England. He accordingly took ship for London, and arrived there in the
following November, poor in means, but rich in his great idea, then his
only property.

As Koenig himself said, when giving an account of his
invention:--"There is on the Continent no sort of encouragement for an
enterprise of this description. The system of patents, as it exists in
England, being either unknown, or not adopted i