THE COLLECTION ILLUSTRATING THE GRAPHIC ARTS. 119 



graphy ia its most perfect form. In Berlin, at the establisliment of W. Korn & Co., 

 I worked and taught my process for fourteen months. In 1863 it was adopted by the 

 Prussian Government for the production from original pen-drawings by A. Berg of an 

 important official work on the Prussian expedition to Japan, China, and Siam. 



My next change of locality was to the United States, lauding in Boston from Liv- 

 erpool in August, 1864. In 1866, under the laws of the State of New York, the Amer- 

 ican Photolithographic Company was formed; Sydney H. Gay, president. In the 

 autumn of that year practical operations were commenced in Brooklyn ; Ezra Cor- 

 nell, president. In 1869 that company, at the request of Commissioner of Patents 

 Fisher, but at its own cost, reproduced the whole of one month's current work for 

 the U. S. Patent Office, comprising about 1,900 drawings, and printed tea copies of 

 each. As superintendent I advised this, to prove conclusively that the process worked 

 by the company was fit for so large and unusual an undertaking. The effort was 

 quite successful and admitted to be so, but it was not until July, 1871, that photo- 

 lithographic reproductions of all the current work in the Patent Office were attempted 

 and executed up to date. That contract we got and held for three years, furnish- 

 ing each week the work done in that week, and printing besides the illustrations for 

 the weekly Official Gazette. An undertaking of such magnitude and difficulty had 

 never been attempted in the history of the graphic arts, and at the time was thought 

 by many to be impossible; it certainly marked an epoch, and is therefore worth 

 noting. For the last twelve or thirteen years I have not been officially connected with 

 the American Photolithographic Company, and need not follow its fortunes further. 

 The United States patents, too, under which it worked, have long ago expired, and 

 my process is used by many ps I practiced it, or in a more or less modified form, for 

 tranfer to stone, or to zinc when the latter is to be etched into relief for the type press. 



The foregoing statement is necessarily very personal in its nature, but it will serve 

 to indicate something of the inducements and opportunities affecting my study of 

 the photo-mechanical arts, and to fix certain dates and a few other facts. Of my 

 knowledge of other workers in this field, of whom many were known to me ; of my 

 estimate of other processes and their relation and relative value one to the other; 

 in short of any collateral matter whatsoever calculated to give the subject vital inter- 

 est I can say nothing that would not extend this letter to an inexcusable length. 



Besides the photo-mechanical specimens which I have given the Museum, the col- 

 lection contains a few lithographic plates by such artists as Menzel, Feckert, Jen- 

 sen, etc., which will find an honorable place in the section of graphic arts. 



Let me now express the pleasure it gives me to have put at last into such excellent 

 keeping a collection so difficult to get and preserve ; one which has cost so much 

 labor, and which will remain so replete with instruction for those who wish to follow 

 the wonderful development of the graphic arts within the last fifty years. I look 

 forward with the greatest interest and expectation to Mr. Koehler's classification and 

 arrangement of the whole, knowing how well his experience, thoroughness, and im- 

 partiality fit him for the work, and I rest confident in the belief that in your appre- 

 ciative care this collection will increase still further, and will be always a valuable 

 and accessible help to other men striving to advance. 

 Yours truly, 



J. W. Osborne. 



Prof. G. Brown Goode, 



Assistant Secretary Smithsonian Institution, 



In charge of U. S. National Museum, 



Washington, D. C. 



