Chromolithography
Cromolitografía
- Date
- 1832-1837 · confidence medium
- Place
- Mulhouse, France
- Credited to
- Godefroy Engelmann (French patent, 1837); developed in parallel in Russia by Kornilii Tromonin (1832)
- Field
- Communication
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A multi-colour lithographic printing method using a separate stone for each colour, which became the dominant colour-printing technique of the 19th century before colour photography replaced it.
Priority is disputed among several European inventors of the 1830s; Jacob Christoph Le Blon had experimented with multi-colour printing a century earlier using a different technique.
What it led to
- Mass-produced colour posters and illustrated press
- Commercial labelling and illustrated packaging
- Industrially coloured cartography