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��Publishers' Department.
��PUBLISHERS' DEPARTMENT.
��SENEFELDER, THE INVENTOR OF LITHOGRAPHY AND CHROMO-LITHOGRAPHY. — HIS ART IN BOSTON DEVELOPED BY L. PRANG & CO. COLOR- PRINTING ON SATIN, ETC.
��A century ago the world knew noth- ing of the art of hthography ; color- printing was confined to comparatively crude products from wooden blocks, most of which were hardly equal to the Japanese fan pictures now familiar to all of us. The year 1799 gave us a new invention which was destined to revolutionize reproductive art and add immensely to the means for education, culture and enjoyment.
Alois Senefelder, born 1 771, at Prague (Austria), started life with writing plays, and too poor to pay a printer, he deter- mined to invent a process of his own which should serve to print his manu- script without dependence upon the (to him) too costly types.
A born inventor, this Alois Senefelder, a genius, supported by boundless hope, immense capability for hard, laborious work, and an indomitable energy; he started with the plan of etching his writings in relief on metal plates, to take impressions therefrom by means of rollers. He found the metal too costly for his experiments ; and Ume- stone slabs from the neighboring quar- ries — he living then in Munich — were tried as a substitute. Although partly successful in this direction, he continued through years of hard, and often disap- pointing trials, to find something more complete. He hit upon the discovery that a printed sheet of paper (new or old) moistened with a thin solution of gum Arabic would, when dabbled over printers' ink, accept the ink from the dabbler only on its printed parts and re-
��main perfectly clean in the blank spaces, so that a facsimile impression could be taken from this inked-in sheet. He found that this operation might be re- peated until the original print gave out by wear. Here was a new discovery, based on the properties of attraction and repulsion between fatty matters (printers ink), and the watery solution of gum Arabic. The extremely delicate nature of the paper matrix was a seri- ous drawback, and had to be overcome. The slabs of limestone which served Senefelder in a previous emergency were now recurred to by him as an ab- sorbent material similar to paper, and a trial by making an impression from his above-mentioned paper matrix on the stone, and subsequent gumming, con- vinced him that he was correct in his surmise. By this act Hthography became an established fact.
A few short years of intelligent ex- perimenting revealed to him all the possibilities of this new discovery. In- ventions of processes followed each other closely until in 18 18 he disclosed to the world in a volume of immortal interest not only a complete history of his invention and his processes, but also a reliable description of the same for others to follow. Nothing really new except photo-lithography has been added to this charming art since that time ; improvement only by manual skill and by chemical progress, can be claimed by others.
Chromo-lithography (printing in colors from stone) was experimented on by
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