The Invention of Lithography. Alois Senefelder
credible that of my six helpers not one could master the extremely simple method of manipulation, the mere matter of rubbing evenly and thoroughly? Of six impressions hardly one ever reached perfection. There were blank spaces here and there. Yes, even when, accidentally, they produced three sections of a sheet correctly, the fourth invariably was a flat failure, and thus ruined the entire sheet. We would have been glad enough had we lost even one half the paper, if only we could have saved our credit by completing the work, regardless of our money loss. But of three reams of paper only thirty-three impressions were won in the end.
I will merely touch on the painful scenes that ensued. The stipulated time had almost expired and no prospect of results. The manuscript and the paper remaining in stock were taken away from us and given to Herr Falter, while we had to suffer severe censure from the Countess, and in her name from others. Herr Gleissner had to pay for new paper, which made a monthly deduction from his salary necessary. The grant of our privilege was endangered, for the Kurfürst had obtained a poor opinion of our process. Indeed, so long as the Kurfürst Karl Theodor lived, all our efforts to obtain a privilege were fruitless. We could not even succeed in having it proposed, although the referee, Herr von Stubenrauch, made us promises from month to month.
All the money we had earned was lost; debts burdened us; and a monthly deduction of pay, with the mocking laughter of those who had been made envious by our first successes, was the entire reward for our endeavors to make a new art. As it was only the lack of a good press that had caused our failure, I went to Herr Falter, with whom I had become acquainted through Herr Gleissner, and told him the reasons for not finishing the cantata in time. I told him that if he were willing to have a proper press built, I was willing to print his works for him, in his own residence, which was his stipulation, provided I could prepare the stones at home. We agreed, and I ordered a great cylinder press made at his expense. To avoid the old trouble I had both cylinders fitted with cogs, which gave satisfactory results if both printers who handled the press were careful to begin turning the cylinders at the same moment. The double friction of the two rollers made them both pull on the printing-frame and the stone, where, before, the lower cylinder had done just the opposite. The greater periphery of the upper cylinder, which was almost fifteen inches thick, helped also. And to this day I consider this form of press the best for all methods, especially if the stones are thick enough, if one has not to consider the very greatest speed; for in speed this press is decidedly inferior to the lever press and other styles. On the other hand, the pressure is much more gentle, more perpendicular, and less liable to pull the paper out of place than is possible with even the best so-called friction presses. Only there should be added to the cogs an appliance by which the upper cylinder has a screw adjusted over its centre, so that it can be forced down for each impression after the stone is under it. Figure 1, plate I, is the picture of such a cylinder press, made for stone-printing.
As soon as the press was ready and erected, I began to inscribe on stone the music of Die Zauberflöte, arranged for quartette by Herr Danzy, and with Herr Gleissner we began the printing.
But Herr Gleissner became dangerously ill. I trained two soldiers to do the printing, left the entire printing process to Herr Falter, and limited myself to the work of delivering the stones to him. The workers ruined so much paper that Herr Falter could not make it pay, and returned to etching on copper.
During this time Herr Schmidt, professor at the military academy, had begun to etch on stone. As I discovered long afterwards, he was a good acquaintance of Herr Gleissner, who visited him often. Within the last year there is a strenuous attempt to make this Herr Schmidt appear to be the inventor of printing from stone, though probably he never desired this. There have been publications about it already. I shall not notice what has been said, and will let the matter speak for itself. From the foregoing the reader will have seen the natural but laborious way in which fate led me to this invention. If Herr Schmidt made a similar discovery at that time, he was much more fortunate than I. According to his own letter, printed in the Anzeiger für Kunst und Gewerbfleiss, the course of his invention was as follows. He saw a gravestone in the Frauen-Kirche, in Munich, on which letters and pictures were in relief. "That must have been done with acid; it would be possible to print from it!" thought he, and the invention was completed.
If it is so easy to gain the honor of an invention, then, indeed, I was unlucky to have undergone so much toil. But according to my opinion, there was nothing new in the whole discovery. The thought that "this was etched" assumed the invention and the use of etching beforehand. That such coarse, thick, and highly relieved inscriptions as those on gravestones could be inked and used for printing would strike anybody who knew even a little of printing. If, however, Herr Schmidt added to his idea the second, that fine and, therefore, only slightly elevated inscriptions and illustrations could be inked and printed with the aid of appliances to be invented for the purpose—if he did this and executed it before me, or, at least, before he had knowledge of my work, then indeed the honor belongs to him of having invented mechanical printing from stone, either before me or simultaneously. But as a matter of fact, neither he nor I can claim to be the first who thought of using stones for printing. Only the "how?" is the new thing in the case.
At that time (1796) I had not invented stone-printing, but, firstly, an ink available for writing on stone and resistant to acid, which ink I invented out of my brains and not, like Herr Schmidt, out of an old Nürnberg book: secondly, I invented a practical tool for inking the slightly elevated letters: and thirdly, the so-called gallows or lever press, of which I shall speak later.
As I do not know what were the circumstances surrounding Herr Schmidt at the time, and I cannot, therefore, make any inquiries, I am willing to take his word if he will declare as an honest man that he printed from stone before July, 1796. That his method of printing was different from mine, and that he had absolutely not the slightest knowledge of chemical printing from stone, which I invented in 1798, I know from indubitable evidence.
He made many attempts with his pupils to produce drawings on stones, but presumably his impressions were not successful, for those stones that I saw afterward at Herr Schulrath Steiner's had been etched first and the spaces then engraved away very deeply with all sorts of steel instruments, after the manner of wood-cuts, so that they might properly be called stone-cuts in relief. He had these stones printed in the Schul-fond's book-printery, and I hear that the impressions were very good. I saw none myself.
However, Professor Schmidt's experiments were the means of making me acquainted with Herr Schulrath Steiner, who encouraged me so much that I conceived many ideas in order to fulfill his wishes, so that at last the art of printing from stone achieved its present honorable position.
Herr Schulrath Steiner, an intimate friend of Professor Schmidt, was director of the Schul-fond's printery. As such he was concerned with many prints. Herr Schmidt's idea of publishing stone-etched pictures of poisonous plants for school use was approved by him; and as the attempts did not satisfy him, he decided to turn to me. At that time the Schul-fond was to print some church songs. This gave him the opportunity of visiting me. He asked me if the musical notes could not be so etched or cut in relief in stone that they could be made up with ordinary book-types and thus printed in the ordinary book-presses. I promised to try it. However, the necessary deep engraving of the spaces was too laborious, so that it would have been easier to do it in wood. As an expedient we printed the text first with ordinary types in the book-press and then printed in the music with stones in the stone-press.
Meantime I tried to attain our purpose in other ways, connected with some of my early experiments. My best success was with the following method. On a stone polished with sand I painted a layer, equal to two or three card-thicknesses, of burned, finely powdered gypsum, butter, and alum, mixed with a proper amount of water. As soon as it was dry I inscribed the music with steel needles of various sizes on the surface of the stone, which was of a somewhat dark, almost gray color, so that I could see it more easily through the soft, white mass. Having finished the drawing I took warm sealing-wax smeared on wood, and applied it to the stone while it was warm with a hand-press. After cooling, the white mass was fast to the sealing-wax and quite loose from the stone, and it was scrubbed away clean with water and a brush, after which the drawing appeared on the wood in elevated wax extremely clear and clean, like a wood-cut. The spaces were so deep that the plate could be printed in regular book-printing