Scientific Process. The technology involved in lithography was developed by a Bavarian named Alois Senefelder in 1795. It spread to France in 1816 and by 1822 was being used in London. In the United States, Bass Otis, a student of the great portrait painter Gilbert Stuart, began to experiment with the new techniques sometime around 1819. Lithography was a delicate technique that required a particular kind of stone, imported from Bavaria, on which the artist drew using special crayons. When the design was finished, the stone would be bathed in gum and acids which would harden the crayon design and cause it to stand out in relief, turning the stone into a plate that, when wet and inked, could be pressed onto paper to make a print.

Publishing. Before lithography was introduced, pictures in books and magazines were reproduced from copperplate engravings or from woodcuts, which were slow and...