Old occupations · card L

Lithographer

A lithographer printed pictures, maps and lettering from a drawing made in grease on a flat stone or metal plate.

Lithography, from Greek words for stone and writing, was invented in 1796 by the German Alois Senefelder and was first used mostly for music and maps. The image was drawn in a greasy substance on smooth limestone, the stone was treated and wetted, and the oily ink stuck only to the drawing before being pressed onto paper.

Wiktionary defines a lithographer as a person who makes lithographs or does lithography. A lithograph today means a fine art print or some older printed matter, not modern commercial printing made by the same basic method.

As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1860 to 1900 census
Gustav Ruhlmeyer, 35, Lithographer, Prussia
How to cite this page

Daily Ancestor. "Lithographer." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/lithographer. Last checked 2026-10-12.

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