M. Senefelder's father was an actor at Munich, and in his youth he followed the same profession. He turned his attention afterwards to music; and it was in his attempts to devise some means of printing his compositions economically that he chanced to discover the art of Lithography.
He had previously made himself acquainted with the methods of copper-plate printing, and he commenced his operations by etching the notes of music on copper-plates, covered with varnish in the ordinary way. He found, however, that it would require much practice to enable him to do this properly, and not being able to buy copper-plates for his rude essays, he thought of practising upon stones. Fortunately for the success of his efforts, the quarries at Solenhofen, near Munich, supplied him with slabs of stone admirably adapted for the purpose; and it is a remarkable coincidence, that the material which Senefelder used for his experiments is the best for the purpose of Lithography that has hitherto been discovered. His chief object in making use of these slabs of stone was to practise himself in the manipulation of writing the notes, and of biting them in with aqua-fortis (nitric acid), as he supposed the slabs would be too brittle to bear the action of the press. He did not try, therefore, to have these etchings on stone proved by the press, but he contented himself with holding them up to a mirror to observe the progress he was making in writing backwards.
Having at length been supplied with much thicker slabs of stone, to bear the requisite pressure, he endeavoured to grind and polish them sufficiently for the purpose of being printed from, in the same manner as copper-plates. He succeeded to some extent in doing so, by means of diluted nitric acid; and he contrived to obtain about fifty good impressions from the stone.
In all these attempts at Lithography, the lines were etched into the stone by the action of nitric acid, and the only advantages professed to be gained by the process were the questionable ones of comparative cheapness of material, and greater facility of working. M. Senefelder admits that there was nothing new in engraving upon stone; all that he claims in that part of the invention is, the manner of polishing the surface, and the composition of the ink adapted for printing from it. The most important step in the progress of the invention of Lithography, as at present practised, was made by accident, which he thus describes:—
"I was preparing a slab of stone for engraving, when my mother asked me to write a memorandum of things she was about to send to be washed. The washerwoman was waiting impatiently whilst we searched in vain for a piece of paper, and the common writing ink was dried up. Having no other writing materials, I wrote the washing bill on the stone I was about to prepare for engraving, using for the purpose my ink made of wax, soap, and lamp-black, intending to copy it afterwards on paper. Whilst looking at the letters I had written, the idea all at once occurred to me how it would do to cover the stone, with the writing upon it, with aqua-fortis, so as to leave them in relief, and then to print from them in the same manner as woodcuts, with a common letter press. The attempts I had hitherto made to engrave upon stone had taught me that the relief of the letters thus obtained would not be much. Nevertheless, I made the attempt. I mixed one part of aqua-fortis with five parts of water, and poured it on the stone to the height of two inches, having previously walled it round with wax in the usual manner. The diluted aqua-fortis was permitted to rest on the stone five minutes. I then examined the effect, and I found that the letters were raised above the stone about the thickness of a card. Most of the lines were uninjured, and retained their original size and thickness. This gave me the assurance that writing, sufficiently traced, especially if the letters were in printed characters, would have still greater relief."[17]
Though M. Senefelder had advanced thus far, he had not yet made application of the chemical properties of ink and water, which constitute the distinguishing characteristics of Lithography. That was reserved for a further discovery, also brought about by accident. The difficulty he experienced in writing words on the stone in the reverse way, induced him to adopt the plan of writing the letters on paper with a soft black-lead pencil, and then transferring them on to the stone by pressure. He subsequently used lithographic ink for the purpose; and in the course of his experiments he observed, that when a paper written on with lithographic ink, and well dried, was dipped into water on which some oil was floating, the oil adhered to the writing, and left the rest of the paper clean, and that this effect was most striking when the water contained some gum in solution. This discovery induced him to try the effect on printed paper; and, taking a printed page from an old book, he moistened it with gum-water, and afterwards sponged the whole surface with oil colour. The colour adhered to the letters, and left the paper clean, and after further experiments he succeeded in printing as many as fifty copies from a page of printed paper; the letters, of course, being reversed. The idea then suggested itself of transferring, on to stone, letters written with lithographic ink upon paper. The plan succeeded, and the principle of the art of Lithography was thus applied to practice. M. Senefelder, in his subsequent improvements, gave a slight relief to the letters by the original plan of using diluted aqua-fortis, by which means the impressions obtained were blacker. He also contrived the means of printing in colours from stone, by reversing the process of ordinary lithographic printing. To produce coloured prints, he left uncovered all the parts that were to receive the colour, and the other parts of the stone were covered with an oleaginous fluid, that quickly dried. On applying any water-colour to the stone, it adhered to the uncovered surface, and not to the covered parts, and that colour was transferred to paper by pressure. In this manner, by using several stones properly prepared, the different colours required were printed, and the effect of a coloured drawing was produced. Thus we perceive, that almost at the first invention of the art of Lithography, the ingenious inventor showed the way of applying it to the production of coloured prints, a process which has lately been carried to great perfection.
Senefelder lived to see his invention extensively adopted, and to reap benefit from his ingenuity. He died at Munich, in 1834, after having been many years the director of the Government lithographic office; and, in the latter years of his life he received a handsome pension from the King of Bavaria.
There is little to be added to the description of the process of Lithography, beyond that given by the original inventor in 1819, the principal advances that have been made in the art having consisted in improved methods of manipulating. The ink now generally employed for drawing on the stone consists of equal parts of tallow, wax, shell-lack, and soap, mixed with about one-twentieth part of lamp-black; but the composition is varied, according to the kind of design to be executed. For writing or drawing upon paper, to be transferred to the stone, more wax is added to the ink, to give it greater tenacity.
The drawing upon paper, to be transferred to stone, is not attended with any difficulty, and may be done by ordinary artists. The ink is applied with a pen, or camel's hair pencil, and when the effect of chalk drawings is required to be imitated, the ink is shaded by means of stumps, similar to those used in chalk drawings on paper. Some artists prefer to work directly on the stone with a camel's hair pencil, or with a composition called lithographic chalk.
To transfer the drawing from paper on to the stone, the paper is first sponged with diluted nitric acid, which decomposes the size, and renders it bibulous. After being placed for an instant between blotting paper, to remove superfluous moisture, it is laid with the drawing downwards on the stone, which is slightly warmed. The stone is then passed through the press, and the drawing adheres firmly to it. To remove the paper, it is wetted at the back with water, and, when quite soft, it is rubbed with the hand. In this manner every particle of the fibrous pulp is cleared away, and the drawing or writing in ink remains as if it had been drawn directly on the stone. To prepare the stone for taking the ink, gum water is poured upon it, and it is rubbed over with a rag containing printer's ink, which serves to blacken the writing and prepares the lines for afterwards receiving the ink.