Communication · 1796

Lithography

Grease and water repel on flat stone, letting images be printed without carving.

Alois Senefelder invented lithography in Bavaria in 1796, printing from a flat stone on which an image was drawn in greasy ink. It made printed pictures, maps and music cheap, and its offset descendant still prints most books and packaging.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 1

Movable-type printing press 1440

What it led to 2

Photography 1839
Photolithography 1957

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

New book titles per million people, UK Latest: 2.11k titles per million (2009) Source: Our World in Data