Alois Senefelder, The Inventor of Lithography

Alois Senefelder was born the son of an actor in Prague in 1771. He first studied law at Ingolstadt, but following the death of his father in 1791 he ended his studies in order to help support his mother and a family of eight sisters and brothers.

After first attempting to become an actor, he took up dramatic writing, but experienced difficulty finding a publisher. Senefelder needed to find a means for printing his productions himself, and began a series of experiments with etching and copper-plates. However, by 1796, he discovered that lime-stone could be used for the purpose of etching. He learned that an image drawn on its surface with greasy ink, wetted with water and then brushed with ordinary ink, retained the ink only on the greasy inked image, owing to the fact that grease and water do not mix. The image could then be reproduced on a sheet of paper pressed against the stone.