The Invention of Lithography. Alois Senefelder

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СКАЧАТЬ the third day I went with a transport of recruits to Ingolstadt, which then was the quarters of the Bavarian artillery. I entered that city with feelings different from those with which I had left it as Academician. But the thought of my invention elevated my spirit to a certain dignity and comforted me with the prophecy of a better future. I was presented to the chief of company and slept a night in the barracks, where unpleasant remarks and the conduct of a vulgar corporal cast heavy shadows over the coming soldiering. Next morning, when I was to be enrolled and named Prague as my birth-place, I was informed that a recent royal order shut out all foreigners from the Bavarian service. So I started on my return, poorer by a hope, but not in entire despair. As I looked down from the Danube bridge into the majestic stream, where as a student I was nearly drowned once, I could not quite prevent the thought that my rescue at that time had not been fortunate, since a too unkind fate seemed to deny me even the one means of support, open to the most helpless, that of the army.

      Still, though cheated by hope a thousand times, I ever followed her lures again, and a new plan instantly formed itself to replace the one that had just gone to wreck. I decided to give up my literary work for the time being and work as a printer for wages.

      Some very badly printed music that I bought in Ingolstadt awakened the idea that with my new printing process I could furnish much better work. I decided to go at once to Herr Falter, the music-dealer of Munich, to interest him in my invention and obtain a small advance of money. Had I done this, my art might have been more thoroughly perfected long ago; but, again, it might never have been developed as it has been, for it was amply sufficient already for music-printing. My shyness, however, prevented me from addressing Herr Falter. Twice I was at his door, and each time I retreated. The second time I met a good acquaintance, a musician named Schrott. In reply to my inquiry if he knew Herr Falter, he said "No," but he told me that the court musician, Gleissner, had paid recently to have several masses printed and intended to publish some more church music soon. Who was happier than I over this news!

      Herr Gleissner was a good friend of old. While I was in the theatre I had engaged him to compose several songs, and had found him a humane and righteous man. Within half an hour I was in his house and explaining my invention to his wife, he being absent. I aroused her interest so much that she seemed thoroughly eager to have me hurry back with a little press model, in order to show them both the working of the process.

      The entire behavior of the woman was so open and artless that I dismissed my first thought, "I might be cheated out of my invention," and hurried to Herr Gleissner in the afternoon with my simple apparatus.

      My printing succeeded absolutely. Gleissner marveled at the swiftness and beauty of the impressions, and, knowing my penniless condition, he offered of his own free will to pay for a small printery.

      My mother had given me a press already. It was the ordinary copper-plate press with two cylinders. True, it was very roughly made, being a house carpenter's work, but it had cost only six gulden. However, one could make very pretty impressions from stone with it. To spare Herr Gleissner's treasury, I contented myself with it for the time. I bought a small stock of stones, paper, and other necessary articles.

      Herr Gleissner composed twelve songs with clavier accompaniment. I wrote them rapidly on stone and made one hundred and twenty impressions with the aid of a day laborer. Everything, composition, writing on stone and printing, was finished in fourteen days. From Herr Falter, who bought one hundred copies, Herr Gleissner received the sum of one hundred gulden. Stones, which could be used over and over again, paper, color, and wages had cost barely thirty gulden; thus we had a clear profit of seventy gulden, earned in fourteen days, and I gained so much happy hope that I thought myself richer than Crœsus.

      We were gay and merry. Through his patron, Count von Törring, then President of the Royal Chamber, Herr Gleissner had presented an impression of our first work to the Kurfürst Karl Theodor, and had received one hundred gulden out of the Cabinet Treasury, with the promise of a franchise.

      A succeeding little piece of work, "Duets for Two Flutes, by Gleissner," brought forty gulden more into our chest, and finally our finances, as well as a bright success for our institution, seemed assured by a contract closed with the Countess von Herting to print a cantata on the death of Mozart by Cannabich, the musical director, which promised us a profit of one hundred and fifty gulden for two or three weeks' work.

      During this time I had presented specimens of work to the Royal Academy of Sciences, with a description of the advantages of the art, in which I named particularly the cheapness, and said that the impression had been made on a press costing not more than six gulden. To my amazement, instead of the expected honorable mention, I received a sum of twelve gulden from the vice-president of the Academy, Herr von Vachiery, with the information that the members had voted favorably for my invention, and that, as my expenses amounted to only six gulden, according to my own statement, I would, no doubt, be satisfied with a sum double this. I had expected an entirely different appreciation from the sentinels of the arts and sciences, whose office was to test the value of this new discovery and call the Government's attention to it if favorable. A mere monetary reward, therefore, especially so small a one, could not possibly give me much pleasure.

      Promising as our beginning was (1793), there came a sad period soon enough for the art, for me, and also for Herr Gleissner. We had ordered a new press as soon as our income permitted. I expected to produce a masterpiece with the first impression. Instead of that, there appeared the very opposite, a dirty and smeared imprint. We suspected that we had made some mistake in method. The second attempt, however, was worse than the first, if possible. To be brief, of twenty trials, made with the greatest industry and toil, we obtained only two or three that were even average.

      As long as I live I shall be unable to understand how we could have been so blind at that time. We sought the cause of failure in everything except the true thing—an alteration that made the new press different from the old one, which unfortunately had been already destroyed. Later, after I had invented the so-called lever or gallows press, the thing was clear to me at once. But by that time it had cost me and Herr Gleissner two years full of toil, worry, and sorrow. In the contract with the Countess von Herting the date of completion of the work had been stipulated, because she wished to surprise Herr Cannabich with it on his birthday. We had barely four weeks left and not a single sheet had been finished. With press alterations, trial impressions, and so forth, we had wasted money and time, and paper by the ream. Our loss amounted to more than one hundred and fifty gulden, and still there was no prospect of final success. Pressed for results by the Countess, our entire reputation and the honor of my invention were at stake. Added to this came many other annoyances, especially the complaints of Frau Gleissner, who charged that I had destroyed the original, perfectly satisfactory press against her will. These tested my courage sadly.

      The cause of all this trouble was so petty that I really must have been half-stupefied by the fear of not keeping our pledges, otherwise I must have perceived it at once.

      To make my first imperfect press I had bought a piece of wood from a wheelwright in order to have it turned into two cylinders. Hardly had the two been in the house a day before each one split so that a longitudinal crack of two inches width appeared. As the upper cylinder was thick enough to make an impression of a whole folio of sheet music without revolving so far as to let the crack reach the stone, I contented myself with it temporarily. Now, in order not to spoil the impressions, I had to begin each revolution of the cylinder at the crack, for otherwise the crack might have come at the middle or end of the impression and given no imprint of that part. Therefore, as the stone was pushed under the cylinder at the crack, it was already gripped before the impression began, and was drawn through at once. With the new press, however, the upper cylinder had to draw the stone between both cylinders in order to bring it under its pressure. But in doing this, the new press first pulled the linen stretched over the printing-frame till it would yield no more and forced the stone powerfully under the cylinder, during which of СКАЧАТЬ