Many pieces were proposed, but none seemed suitable, because each one wished to play a good and suitable part, and, besides, we could not fill most of the parts, as we lacked women. We were almost giving up hope when Herr Kuerzinger, now court actor, proposed to me to write a play, as I had begun one shortly before that happened to suit each of my friends.
I finished the little piece, Die Mädchen Kenner, in a short time. It was ready for production, when through accident we were disappointed about securing the private theatre on which we had counted. We were emboldened to request leave to produce it in the Kurfürst's Court Theatre and succeeded, thanks to my father's aid. The over-kind praise which it won encouraged me to have the play printed. Although I was pretty generous with free copies among my friends, I received so much from Lentner, the book-dealer in Munich, that a net profit of fifty gulden remained to me.
I had not worked eight days on the little thing, and had made all this money, without counting the pleasure of the work. No wonder that now I feared no longer for my future! My love for the theatre became overpowering, and as my father died soon afterward (1791), and I found no further assistance toward completing my studies in Ingolstadt, I resolved to become a dramatic author and actor.
I found no place for me in the Court Theatre. Its leaders were opposed to my family, because my mother with her large family received a larger pension, through the favor of the Kurfürst, than she could have expected in ordinary course. In a few strolling theatres, such as Regensburg, Nürnberg, Erlangen, and Augsburg, where I endured privation and misfortune enough, my enthusiasm was well dampened in the course of two years. I decided, as I could see no other prospects for the moment despite my not inconsiderable attainments, to support myself in future as author.
I had written several dramatic pieces already that had won sufficient applause. Therefore I decided to have some of these printed in order to meet my immediate expenses. I gave one of them to the printing establishment of Herr Hübschmann, in Munich, and when the first folio was finished, I made the proposition to Herr Lentner to take some or all of the copies. He told me that I would have done better to let him have the manuscript; but since it had been begun, he told me to make sure that it be finished before the beginning of the Leipsic Easter Fair, in which case he promised to obtain for me one hundred gulden net, after deducting all costs. I begged Herr Hübschmann to finish the printing, but, as he assured me that it was impossible, I took the remaining folios to another printer. Despite this the play was not printed till two weeks after the fair, and I received from Herr Lentner barely enough to pay the printing cost.
My hope of profit was lost. I had, however, seen the entire procedure of printing, because I had spent many a day in the establishments. I found that it would not be hard for me to learn, and could not withstand the desire to own a small printing establishment myself. "Thus," thought I, "I can print my productions myself, and so alternate healthfully between mental and physical activities." I could earn a decent living, too, and thus become an independent man.
This idea controlled me so that I studied all sorts of ways to realize it. If I had possessed the necessary money, I would have bought types, a press and paper, and printing on stone probably would not have been invented so soon. The lack of funds, however, forced me to other expedients. At first I thought of etching letters in steel. These matrices I planned then to impress on pear wood, in which the letters would show in relief, somewhat like the cast type of the book printers, and they could have been printed like a wood-cut. A few experiments showed me the possibility of this, and I could easily have invented a machine with which the moulding could have been done more quickly than a printer could set his type. I reserve the right to use this possibly fruitful idea in future with improvements. At the time, however, I had to give up the whole thing through lack of implements and sufficient skill in engraving.
Then it struck me that if I had only enough types to set one column or folio, I could press this into a soft material, transfer the impression to a board covered with soft sealing-wax, and reproduce the relief plate thus obtained in stereotype form. The attempt succeeded perfectly. I made a sort of dough of clay, fine sand, flour, and coal-dust, which, being firmly kneaded, took the impression very well, and was so dry in a quarter of an hour that I could print warmed sealing-wax thoroughly well with a small press. I inked these letters of sealing-wax relief with printing-ink laid on with a leather roller stuffed with horse-hair and obtained a result as clean as any obtained from ordinary types. By mixing finely powdered gypsum with the sealing-wax I made the latter harder than the ordinary type composition. Thus there was nothing in the way of my making stereotype plates (which I did not know by this name at that time), except a few minor appliances and a small stock of types. But even this exceeded my financial power and I gave up the plan, especially as I had conceived a new one during my experiments.
This was to learn to write out ordinary type letters exactly, but reversed. I planned that as soon as I attained the skill, I would write them with an elastic steel pen on a copper plate covered in ordinary manner with etching surface, etch, and let the copper-plate printers print them. In a few days I had such skill in reverse writing that I attacked the etching on copper bravely. Here, to be sure, I met greater difficulties. Writing on copper over the etching surface was far more difficult than writing on paper. Then the preparation of the plate, the etching, etc., demanded some practice; but all this I hoped to conquer in time. The one thing that troubled me was that I could not correct the errors made during writing. The accessories of copper-plate engravers, especially the so-called cover varnish, were quite unknown to me. I knew no remedy except to paint the faulty places over with molten wax, but the covering generally became so thick that I could not work through it properly and had to leave the corrections for the graving stilus, which, however, I could not handle at the time.
As, however, the proofs were thoroughly satisfactory to me, I labored desperately to overcome the difficulty. During my student years I had attained much chemical knowledge, and I knew that most of the resinous products which withstand acid, as well as the fats, wax, tallow, and so forth, can be dissolved and diluted partly in etheric oils and spirits of wine, and partly in alkalies. My problem was to obtain a thin mass which would permit itself to be spread very thinly in cold condition over the copper etching surface, dry quickly, become sufficiently firm after drying without getting tough, and, above all, be something that would not attack the etching surface. A few trials with spirits of wine and various resinous forms gave no satisfaction. The one experiment that I made with oil of turpentine and wax also failed, presumably because I diluted the mixture more than necessary, which caused it to flow too much and dissolve the etching surface, at which time several well-done parts of the engraving were ruined. Besides, this mixture dried only slowly to the degree necessary for working. Fortunately I made no further experiments with this material, because then I should not have invented stone-printing, as I know now how to make a cover varnish that is quite satisfactory.