PHOTO-LITHOGRAPHY
THE AUTHOR’S PREFACE.
PHOTO-LITHOGRAPHY,with its many branches and its extendedapplication, when used direct and also as handmaid for thelithographer and printer from stone, is, with the exception ofphototypy and autotypy, indeed that process for the preparationof letterpress plates which has done the most towards makingphotography useful for the graphic arts, in the artistic sense aswell as from the practical point of view. And in the near futureit will be a great acquisition when it is once generally recognizedthat colour plates can be prepared by photographic means withoutany considerable amount of manual or artistic help. It is themore to be wondered at that photo-lithography has not yet foundthat extension and general use which it in so high a degreedeserves.
I have written this book, impressed with the urgency ofstimulating the propagation of this useful process. In writing Ihave been careful to avoid all those details which are for thepractical worker of minor interest—the description of thehistorical evolution, etc., so instructive as these must certainly be—sothat I have abstained from many complicated and unintelligibleformulæ. I leave this willingly to a more readywriter. Starting rather from the standpoint of speaking as apractical worker to practical men, I have recorded all theexperience which I have gained in the course of many years.
Should it occur to me in the future that it was my task to havetreated all photo-lithographic processes, with all their ramifications,in the most complete manner, I have still the consciousnessof having described as completely as possible the practicalprocesses, and think that I have thus been usefulto many workers, {2}and I dare say with absolute certainty that only tested and triedformulæ have been noticed in this book.
With the earnest wish that this book may be received with afraction of the goodwill with which I have worked at the writingof the same, I present it to the technical world.
GEORG FRITZ.
Vienna.
On receiving this work for review I was greatly struck with thethoroughly practical manner in which it was written, and thoughtthat an English translation might be acceptable to the large andever increasing class of photo-mechanical workers who might nototherwise have the opportunity of reading it in the original. Ihave kept to