that theirs was washed elsewhere. Alois Senefelder used as ink his composition of soap, lamp-black, and wax to write upon a piece of this soft stone the items of this historic bundle of linen his mother was sending to be washed. The result was the discovery of lithography. At first he corroded the surface of the stone with aquafortis and found that the black composition resisted the acid and left the writing standing in relief and capable of being printed from. But later he found that a simpler process would arrive at the same result. He wetted the stone with water after writing upon it with his black, greasy composition, the surface of the stone being exceedingly porous drank up the water, but the writing was left untouched. On passing a roller charged with printing-ink over this he found that the ink only adhered to the parts written upon. This rudimentary principle of the natural antipathy of grease to water was the foundation of lithography.
Its earliest use in 1796 was in printing pieces of music, and it was not very long before transfer paper was used to enable a design to be drawn in the usual manner and transferred to the stone, obviating the unpleasant necessity of drawing in reverse. The year 1798 is the date when Senefelder had brought it to practical perfection and discovered the best means of printing from lithographic stones. Patents were taken out in Vienna, Paris, and London. The art at his commencement was known by the name of polyautography. It found ready favour with artists who saw its possibilities in reproducing their own work without the interposition of an interpreter
