When Koenig consulted him on the subject, Nicholson observed that "seventeen years before he had taken out a patent for machine printing, but he had abandoned it, thinking that it wouldn't do; and had never taken it up again." Indeed, the two machines were on different principles.

Nor did Nicholson himself ever make any claim to priority of invention, when the success of Koenig's machine was publicly proclaimed by Mr.
Walter of The Times some seven years later.
When Koenig, now settled abroad, heard of the attempts made in England to deny his merits as an inventor, he merely observed to his friend Bauer, "It is really too bad that these people, who have already robbed me of my invention, should now try to rob me of my reputation." Had he made any reply to the charges against him, it might have been comprised in a very few words: "When I arrived in England, no steam printing machine had ever before been seen; when I left it, the only printing machines in actual work were those which I had constructed." But Koenig never took the trouble to defend the originality of his invention in England, now that he had finally abandoned the field to others.
There can be no question as to the great improvements introduced in the printing machine by Mr.Applegath and Mr.Cowper; by Messrs.

Hoe and Sons, of New York; and still later by the present Mr.Walter of The Times, which have brought the art of machine printing to an extraordinary degree of perfection and speed.

But the original merits of an invention are not to be determined by a comparison of the first machine of the kind ever made with the last, after some sixty years' experience and skill have been applied in bringing it to perfection.
Were the first condensing engine made at Soho--now to be seen at the Museum in South Kensington--in like manner to be compared with the last improved pumping-engine made yesterday, even the great James Watt might be made out to have been a very poor contriver.

It would be much fairer to compare Koenig's steam-printing machine with the hand-press newspaper printing machine which it superseded.