Herr Mitterer now has attained such perfection, especially in the simple crayon method, that many of his productions probably will remain the non plus ultra of this method. Lithography also owes to his unresting energy the triumph of having been become the mother of many useful works of instruction, which are so cheap that they only require the active work of a good art-dealer or book-dealer to become widely circulated.
Besides this, Herr Mitterer is the inventor of the so-called cylinder or pilot-wheel press, which he has improved so much lately that it does almost everything that one can demand from a perfect press in point of power, speed, and ease of operation.
Since 1809, I have dedicated myself almost uninterruptedly to improvements, and to the work of reducing all manipulation and processes in all branches to their simple elementary principles. Thus some of my earlier inventions—such as transfers from paper which has been inscribed with fatty inks, and the transfers from new and old books and copper-plate impressions—have been brought to a high degree of excellence through my manifold experiments, so that one can make lithographic stereotypes in the easiest manner.
Furthermore I have made such progress in color printing that, besides pictures illuminated with colors, I can also produce pictures quite similar to oil paintings, so that nobody can discover that they have been printed, because they possess all the distinguishing points of paintings.
At the same time I have invented a new method for printing pictures, wall tapestry, playing-cards, and even cotton, which enables two men to make two thousand impressions of the size of a sheet of letter-paper daily, even though the picture may contain a hundred or more colors. Incredible as this may seem, I surely shall produce extraordinary and amazing proofs of this in a few years if I remain alive and well.
Among the other methods that I have invented since this time the most excellent are some aqua tint processes, the spatter-work method, the intaglio crayon method, the conversion of the relief method into intaglio and vice versa, and the machine-written text for editions de luxe.
Among other things I also sought to remedy the difficulty which arises from the great dependence on the skill and industry of the printers. Therefore I planned a printing-machine wherein the dampening and inking of the stones should be done not by hands but by the mechanism of the press itself, which, in addition, could be operated by water and thus work almost without human intervention. With this invention I believed that I had set my art on the pinnacle of completion; and when in 1817 I exhibited a model of this press (which also was adapted by me for utilizing the principles of stone or chemical printing on metal plates) before the Royal Academy of Sciences in Munich, I was so fortunate as to receive its golden medal in sign of universal approval.
But the most important of all my inventions since my employment in the service of the Royal Government was, without question, the invention of a sufficient substitute for the natural limestone plates, which often incurred well-founded censure because of their unevenness, weight, and fragility, and have the further fault of demanding a great deal of storage room.
Before the Royal Academy of Sciences, and also before the Polytechnical Society of Bavaria, I demonstrated that chemical printing could be utilized with advantage on metal plates; but that still more useful was a composition of artificial stone which could be painted on metal, wood, stone, and even on plain paper or linen, and used in all processes exactly like the natural Solenhofen stone.
The countless experiments that I have made in the past four years with this substitute (or, as some call it, stone-paper), in order to prove its usefulness under all circumstances, have filled me with the absolute conviction that it replaces the natural stone completely without having the many faults that in the nature of the case are inseparable from the use of the latter. In many respects it is far superior. The fragility of the Solenhofen stone requires the use of thick slabs for printing. If the impression is to be letter-sheet size, the stone must be at least one and one half inches thick if it is not to crack under pressure. If the stone is to be used for more than one job, the thickness must be two to three inches. To be sure, it can be ground and used over again some hundreds of times, a valuable consideration in view of the capital invested in a stone. But such a stone weighs from sixty to eighty pounds, sometimes more, and occupies considerable space. Add the investment necessary for laying in any great number of stones, and it becomes a difficult matter financially to undertake work that requires that the stones be held for a number of years, to be used for new impressions according to the sales of the work. Therefore it is necessary, generally, to print a maximum quantity at once, so that the stones may be ground and used for new work.