Commercial Letterpress

William Kurtz and the Attempt To Monopolize Color Printing in America

Brian Gamm January 3, 2021
Portrait of William Kurtz scanned from Sipley’s 1951 book, A Half Century of Color.​2​

“The monotones may be pleasing, may possess the highest artistic touch, and may be everything that could with reason be expected; but color attracts and changes and otherwise dull subject into one of life; and with that intuitive love for the beautiful which we all possess, we look for the colors and tints.” —Photo-Era Magazine, 1901​1​

Contents show

William Kurtz was first person to successfully demonstrate the use of three-color engraving and printing for the reproduction of a natural scene. His achievements were the culmination of a lifetime of work and perseverance. After spending his early adulthood in the military and employed on shipping vessels, Kurtz settled in New York and became perhaps the most famous photographer in New York City. He built a substantial fortune from his photography and engraving business; however, circumstances quickly changed. This is the story of how Kurtz rose to prominence as a photographer, revolutionized printing, and then found himself at the mercy of his business partners and patent trolls looking to capitalize on his life’s work.

Kurtz’s Early Career as a Photographer

Kurtz was described as “a striking figure, with the air and manner of a German scientist, which in truth he is. He wears a grey moustache and beard cut a la Prince Imperial, and his sharp grey eyes are half hidden beneath a pair of shaggy eyebrows. Add a pair of glistening spectacles to the thoughtful face and you have the picture complete.”​3​ Born in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany in 1833, Kurtz spent his early adulthood training as a lithographer in Offenbach before starting his compulsory military service and subsequently serving in the Crimean War with the British-German Legion. After service, he sought lithographic work in England but could not get hired (likely due to his poor command of the English language, then considered a disability by employers​4​), then spent the next three years as a sailor. In 1859, he was shipwrecked off the Falkland Islands while sailing to San Francisco from England around Cape Horn, the southern tip of South America. He and his crew were rescued by an English vessel bound for Virginia, after which Kurtz made his way north, arriving in New York in 1859, at the age of 26.​5​

Kurtz serendipitously found employment working for the photographer George Loud as he considered plans to continue his journey to California. The story of his employment was told in an 1872 article on the History of Photography:

While looking for a vessel destined for California, a circumstance occurred which changed the entire complexion of his plans. He was seated in a restaurant, and listlessly glancing over the columns of a newspaper which happened to be near him, when suddenly his attention was arrested by a photographer’s advertisement for services of an assistant. He was induced to apply for the situation, with not the remotest expectation of meeting with success. Greatly to his surprise, he found himself engaged at a very modest salary.​4​

His artistic work was interrupted again in 1862 by three-years of service for the Northern Union Army in the American Civil War. After the war ended in 1865, Kurtz went into the photography business with an associate named Huston. Their business flourished and was known as one of the “most elegant establishments in New York City,” employing forty assistants. Kurtz was a sought-after, well-respected photographer. He also contributed both scientific and artistic techniques to the field., most well-known of which was the “Rembrandt Effect”. Rembrandt Van Ryn was known for the subtle interplay between light and shadow in his paintings, which gave depth and emotion to his subjects. Kurtz, “after diligent investigation, determined that the roving sunbeam was as tractile as the painter’s pencil. He borrowed the art of contrasting light and shadow with effect from Rembrandt Van Ryn…and applied it to photography.”​4​ Kurtz also pioneered negative retouching, in which harsh lines were softened, and invented several new photographic tools and techniques.​6​

Dr. Herman Wilhelm Vogel—the renowned German photographic scientist whose scientific contributions in the 1880s would play an important role in Kurtz’s work—visited Kurtz in 1876, describing his studio as,

“the most beautiful of all those he had seen. It consists of a block of buildings especially erected for photographic purposes, with a splendid frontage to Madison-square. The ground floor is occupied by shops, and the upper three floors by the photographic establishment. On the first floor is the reception-room, decorated by choice specimens of Mr. Kurtz’s work. Above there are two glass-houses—a small one on the second floor, with a projecting balcony, for taking children, and another fifty feet long on the third floor. The whole establishment is beautifully fitted up, and supplied with all the most convenient appliances.”​7​

Electric lighting was not available in the 1870s. Photographic studios were always located on the upper floors of New York buildings where sunlight was plentiful.

Thomas Edison patented the light bulb in 1880​8​, and, by 1883 Kurtz had outfitted his New York studio (near what is now Times Square) with electric illumination, becoming one of the first photographers in New York to do so. Photography was in high demand in the winter months, but the cloudy conditions and shorter days made natural-light photography in elevated studios difficult. The use of electric illumination allowed Kurtz the ability to photograph year-round and move his studio to the ground floor, as advertised below, where he could photograph people in their finest clothes after leaving the opera.

Advertisement for Kurt’s photography business, 1883.​9​

Kurtz’s electric light photography and overall talent gained him an international reputation. His studio, and accompanying gallery, were considered “the finest in the city.”​10​ Among his subjects was the American Poet, Walt Whitman, pictured below in an 1878 photograph with the children of a friend,​11​

Photograph of Walt Whitman By William Kurtz

Kurtz Ventures into Process Engraving

In 1884, Kurtz joined forces with engraver, Frederick A. Ringler, owner of both an electrotyping and stereotyping business and a brewery.​12​ Ringler, whose electrotyping business was located near Kurtz’s photography studio, wanted to branch out into zinc etching, but lacked a photographic studio. Ringler proposed a partnership with Kurtz in which negatives would be produced in Kurtz’s studio then carried to Ringler’s engraving plant for plate making. This arrangement lasted until they moved the operation to a larger space where the process could be completed from start to finish and incorporated under the umbrella of the Electro-Light Engraving Company.​12​

Halftoning was still in its infancy when Kurtz and Ringler went into business. In 1881, Frederick Ives patented his halftone process as a “substitute for the hand-made pen or crayon drawings formerly required in the production of printing locks by the aid of photography.”​13​ The object to be reproduced was first photographed and a negative made. This negative was then used to expose a chromo-gelatin film. “The film was then developed to a relief picture by washing in warm water,” causing the gel to swell more in areas where there was greater exposure. A plaster cast was made of the gelatin relief plate, with undulations opposite the original gelatin plate.​14​ The white surface was divided by Ives in lines and dots, by blackening a stamp made of rubber or similar elastic material, and provided with V-shaped conical indentations, and pressing the same against the white relief in in different directions.”​15​ This stamp made areas in higher relief black and left the areas at greatest depth white. This white relief plate with black lines and dots was then photographed, producing a halftone negative, which in turn was used to etch a zinc relief plate.

While Ives’ process was well received, a process introduced by Meisenbach in Germany in 1882 was one of the first to propose creation of halftone plates without the gelatin relief used by Ives (and others). The foundation of the Meisenbach process was, like the Ives process, a negative made of the object. This negative was then copied to another negative, forming a positive. This positive was placed in contact with an opaque screen in which transparent ruled lines were cut. The final negative was produced after exposure through this combined positive and screen.​15​ According to Ives, if the process “was not more than this, it would have been utterly unscientific and practically worthless,” simply a division of the positive into ruled lines.​13​ Meisenbach’s innovation was to interrupt the exposure at the halfway point and moved slightly in a direction perpendicular to the line directions. This results in lines with widths corresponding to the density of the negative. According to Angerer, “The most essential points in the Meisenbach process are the insertion of line arrangements and interruption in the exposure.”​14​ Others had tried similar processes, but it was Meisenbach’s that gained the most recognition. He was apparently protective of his techniques, keeping the patent vague and demanding original negatives be sent to him for processing.

The production of lined screens required a skilled hand. Different methods were used to create the lined screen. In some cases, a ruled white object was photographed, and the resulting negative used as the screen.​15​ Kurtz himself was known to produce exceptional screens “in the most perfect manner; they are drawn on a peculiar ground, upon plate glass under water.”​14​

Cross-line screens could also be employed in the Meisenbach process to achieve halftone dots rather than halftone lines. One technique employed a hybrid approach in which a parallel line screen was rotated 90 degrees halfway through the exposure. “The results will be that the clear parts of the transparency will only be fully exposed when they have been twice crossed by the clear line screen and they will be represented in the negative by areas of which one-fourth only are up to density, one-half of which are halftone, and one-fourth of which are clear.”​15​

Kurtz became quite proficient at the production of Meisenbach halftone plates, also referred to as “autotypes,” and his contemporaries were not shy about praising his work. The production of one portrait was described as follows in 1888: “[The Portrait] was made by Mr. William Kurtz, in his electric-light gallery, with the light-force of ten thousand candle-power, emitted from six Excelsior lamps, upon a 14×17 Eastman Special Plate, and reproduced for relief printing by Mr. Kurtz’s inimitable autotype (Meisenbach) process.”​16​ Another photograph that drew acclaim was the “Arab Sheik,” shown below, described as “interesting and instructive” in its demonstration of Kurtz’s photomechanical process.​17​

“The Arab Sheik,” Meisenbach prints by William Kurtz, from a reproduction in The American Annual of Photography, 1888.​17​

While Kurtz was making a name for himself as a photographer in the 1870’s, Dr. Hermann W. Vogel was researching a method to expand the spectral sensitivity of photographic emulsions. Silver bromide photographic emulsions prior to the 1880s were much more sensitive to blues than reds, yellows, and oranges. This deficiency was a major obstacle for the reproduction of art and natural scenes, even in black and white. The human visual system perceives yellow colors to be lighter than blues. Yet, yellow would appear a darker shade of gray than blue in photographs, giving them an unnatural appearance. In 1873, Vogel discovered that “silver bromide could be rendered sensitive to green, yellow, orange and red by staining it with dyes that would absorb rays of those colors.”​18​ However, the specific dyes that would give the best results were not yet known in 1873. Vogel had worked with corallin, a yellow-reddish dye, at that time to increase sensitiveness to yellow. In 1874, the French Physicist E. Becquerel found that a chlorophyll dye increased sensitivity to green, but chlorophyll lost sensitivity over time in storage and had other less desirable chemical properties.​13​  It was not until 1884 that Vogel found a dye mixture that gave sensitivity to greens, yellow, and oranges, which he referred to as “azaline.”​19​ The invention of azaline led Vogel to create the first “orthochromatic” (also known as “panchromatic”) plates with sensitivity to all regions of the visible spectrum. Orthochromatic plates then made possible three-color photographic separations for process color printing.

Vogel had a close relationship with Kurtz. It was already stated that Vogel visited Kurtz at his studio in 1876, but it is likely they knew each other well before that time. By the 1890s Vogel had begun to focus on three-color printing.​20​ Vogel and the lithographer, Emil Ulrich, created a process for multi-color collotype printing around 1890.​*​ Kurtz then became interested in this process and acquired the rights to it from Vogel and Ulrich so he might adapt it to halftone relief printing. Kurtz had already begun working with orthochromatic processes in the late 1880s, and it was suggested that he further perfected his skills after visiting Vogel in Germany prior to 1892. ​21,22​One note from 1888 mentioned Kurtz’s mastery of orthochromatic techniques for the reproduction of paintings: “the splendid effects gotten by Mr. Kurtz, of New York City, by his orthochromatic process in photographing paintings so that the color of the objects in the picture are represented in true relation to each other…is indeed encouraging.”​23​

In 1892, Vogel’s son, Ernst Vogel, spent several months working with Kurtz in his New York engraving plant. E. Vogel had recently completed his doctorate in photochemistry in Berlin and carried on his father’s work, experimenting with three-color printing using the Collotype process.​24​ Kurtz, with the help of E. Vogel, perfected the process of three-color relief using the techniques pioneered by H. W. Vogel and Ulrich. According to Sipley, citing Stephen H. Horgan, Kurtz paid E. Vogel $40,000 for six months of work, an incredible sum equivalent to more than $1M today. Some sources suggest that Kurtz purchased the orthochromatic technology from H. W. Vogel,​25​ which might indicate the large payment to E. Vogel was in accordance with the broader financial arrangement Kurtz and the Vogels. Kurtz’s work with E. Vogel in New York formed the foundation of Kurtz’s 1893 patent.​26​ E. Vogel returned to Germany in March 1893, a month after the patent was filed.

The precise contribution of E. Vogel to this work was debated. One note stated quizzically: “We do not know how far Dr. E. Vogel assisted Mr. Kurtz in his experiments in heliochromy [another word for orthochromatic plate production], but if we may judge of the work done long before the young gentleman [Vogel] arrived on our shores…his help could not have amounted to much.”​21​

The fruits of Kurtz’s labor in three-color engraving were made public in the January 1893, when he published the engraving pictured below in H. W. Vogel’s magazine, Photographische Mittheilungen (“Photographic Communications”). Describing the print in his book on the history of 20th century color, Sipley wrote, “In producing this masterpiece of photoengraving, that which can be said to mark most definitely the beginning of modern color printing, Kurtz had employed single-line screens which he used as follows. The blue block lines were at 45 degrees to the left of the vertical; the red lines were 45 degrees to the right of the vertical; and the yellow lines were 90 degrees to the vertical.”​26​

One of Kurtz’s contemporaries commented that “undoubtedly this is the finest thing which had yet to been turned out by this process.”​21​ The same writer continued to reprint a quote from H. W. Vogel:

“This picture from natural (not painted) still life will prove to the reader the possibility of carrying out the process of E. Vogel and Kurtz. The surprising thing about the picture is not merely the colors but also the reality; the natural bloom of the peach, of the grapes, the moisture of the lemon, even the peculiar excrescences of the pine-apple are accurately reproduced….We can congratulate ourselves on having a German discovery which has been perfected on American soil under the hand of the master of autotypy, W. Kurtz.”​21​

The irony that Kurtz’s three-color relief method was claimed as a “German invention,” despite being created in New York, was not lost on the writer. As was mentioned previously, others had questioned the contribution of E. Vogel to the invention. The writer also wondered “why Mr. Kurtz, of New York, should have felt called upon to announce his results first in a foreign publication.”  However, this decision of Kurtz’s does not seem so perplexing when one considers the close relationship between the Vogels and Kurtz. Interestingly, while the image below and H. W. Vogel’s statement, credits E. Vogel as a co-creator along-side Kurtz, the 1893 patent only contains a singular name: William Kurtz.   

Kurtz’s work showed that high-quality three-color relief printing was both fast and affordable. “These three cardinal points in photo-mechanical reproductions [quality, speed, and low cost] constitute the feat which Mr. Kurtz has accomplished in his beautiful heliochromes.”​21​​*​ It is difficult for us to imagine, more than 125 years later, the obstacles Kurtz had to overcome to achieve his successful three-color relief reproductions. By the 1880s, as one writer described, the halftone printing process “was then in its infancy and the means at hand for a successful development of the theory were poor indeed. It is doubtful if the scheme would ever have proved successful had not Mr. Kurtz shown himself one of the most capable and determined photographers that the trade has ever produced. Practically everything depended on the negative, and the men who possessed the capacity or the perseverance necessary to solve the endless difficulties constantly arising were exceedingly scarce.”​3​ Although by 1893 there were many practitioners of halftone engraving, they were building on the work of those who put in the work before them. As the writer went on to say, “the development of half-tone engraving in this country began with William Kurtz.”

The Patent

Kurtz made the following claims in his 1893 patent, number US 498,396:

The herein described process of photo-mechanical printing, which consists in producing half-tone negatives by subjecting the sensitized plates to one exposure through screens which are provided with parallel lines running in one direction only, but in which the lines run in different directions in each other, next producing printing plates from said half-tone negatives and finally printing in different colors from these printing plates, so that the lines of the different printing plates will intersect each other in different directions, substantially as set forth.​27​

This short paragraph was a thorn in the side of American photoengravers for the next thirteen years. Two claims are cited and will be referred to as Claim 1 and Claim 2 for clarity:

  1. “Producing half-tone negatives by subjecting the sensitized plates to one exposure through screens which are provided with parallel lines running in one direction only, but in which the lines run in different directions in each other”
  2. “Producing printing plates from said half-tone negatives and finally printing in different colors from these printing plates, so that the lines of the different printing plates will intersect each other in different directions, substantially as set forth.”

Claim 1 described the process of producing different screen plates through parallel-line screens where different screen angles are used for each separation. Claim 2 described the use of these halftone negatives with different screen angles to print with inks of different colors so the lines of each ink will each cross each other at different angles. The vagueness of these claims was not lost upon Kurtz’s contemporaries. Interpreted broadly, the patent appears to cover any or all print processes, any number of colors, with screens at any angle. Interpreted strictly, it applies only to the use of parallel line screen, a practice quickly being replaced by cross-line screens.

In 1893, Kurtz formed the Coloritype Company—the same year in which his patent was applied for and granted—to grow his three-color engraving business.​†​ Kurtz, serving as the Coloritype Company’s President, likely assigned the rights to the patent to the Coloritype Company. The company operated out of a building, “erected to supply its especial needs, with a full equipment of the best mechanical appliances to be obtained, and with ample capital to carry out its plans.”​12​

Coloritype Company advertisemenet from The Outlook, May1896. ​28​
Example of three-color printing from the Coloritype Company.​29​

Kurtz gained considerable wealth through his photography business and engraving partnership with Ringler. In 1895, the Coloritype Company was “filled with orders for ten months to come”​30​, though an order backlog did not necessarily indicate the company was cash rich. Kurtz invested much of his fortune into his three-color engraving research but he was not able to earn back the investment. Sources cite his investment as somewhere between $100,000​31​ and $200,000​26​ dollars ($3M-$6M today). Stephen Horgan wrote 28 years after Kurtz’s patent was published, that “Kurtz took all the three color theories that had appeared before his time and put them into practice, though he lost his fortune in the doing of it, and died poor.”​32​ According to Sipley, Kurtz had not patented his results and “engravers and printers all over the United States rushed to get into the production of three-color plates and prints.”​26​ The famous photograph of the fruit still-life that resulted from Kurtz’s work with E. Vogel was published in March 1893. Considering the many weeks of lead time required to publish color plates for magazines, it might have been that Kurtz rushed to get the patent filed before publication of his three-color engraving in the United States to protect against the threat of competition.

Ringler also likely lost money in the Coloritype Company as competition flooded the market. Ringler was known as “a hustler,” who would “place the Coloritype Company’s business where it should be as the pioneer concern in putting into practical working shape the three-color process.”​33​ The Coloritype Company’s best asset was Kurtz’s patent. With Kurtz in financial distress, Ringler secured a controlling interest in the Coloritype Company in 1896 and became the company’s President and Treasurer.​12​ He then began a campaign to stifle the Coloritype Company’s competition by threatening action against anyone infringing on the Kurtz patent.​12​ One might even wonder whether Ringler pushed Kurtz to patent his technique, knowing full well that it would be a valuable tool to extract licensing fees or simply ward off the competition.

Ringler stepped down as President of the Coloritype Company in 1898 and was replaced by Mr. Alfred M. Hesser, a former employee of the Electro-Light Engraving Company (the Ringler-Kurtz joint engraving venture formed before the Coloritype Company).​34​ Between 1888 and 1899, the Coloritype Company became the New York Colortype Company (note the change in spelling from “Coloritype” to Colortype”). In 1899, attorneys for the New York Colortype Company began threatening American engravers with patent infringement suits. A. C. Austin wrote in June 1899 of the letters distributed to photoengravers nationwide by the firm Banning and Banning, of Chicago, “causing in some cases a little trepidation, and in nearly all cases considerable discussion concerning the matter at interest, the Kurtz patent.”​35​ The letter, dated April 12, 1899, from Banning and Banning is quoted below from a reprint of the original:

“GENTLEMEN,—As attorneys for the New York Colortype Company, we hereby notify you that in its photo-mechanical printing your company is infringing the William Kurtz patent,  No. 498,396, dated May 30, 1893, owned by our client; and we hereby request you and your company to immediately desist from further infringement thereof. Unless you are willing to do this, we will have to begin suite for an injunction and damages. Requesting an immediate answer.      Yours very respectfully, BANNING & BANNING.”​35​

The New York Colortype Company was formed around 1899 “upon the ashes of the old Coloritype Company” and “secured all the right, title and interest in the Kurtz patents with the avowed purpose of persecuting all infringers, and with the expectation of making more by the granting of licenses than they can by making of the colour plates.”​35​ One would assume it was Hesser who initiated the name change. Austin thought that, given the use of a Chicago-based firm, the New York Colortype Company might be allied with the Chicago Colortype Company, though they were only on record as being a licensee. This era in photoengraving was ripe for consolidation, with engraving firms joining forces in both Chicago and New York to stifle competition and bully the smaller engraving companies with a join-or-die mentality. The conglomeration of color engravers in America was known as the “Color Printing Trust.”​36​

Engravers presented with such a letter as above had two options: comply and desist three-color printing operations, or defy the order, under threat of litigation, and continue printing three-color jobs. There were only two possible defenses against the threat of infringement: 1) prove that the patent was not infringed upon, or 2) prove that the patent was invalid, meaning it never should have been granted.​37​

Engravers widely agreed that the Kurtz patent was both irrelevant and obsolete. By 1899, single-line screens had been replaced by cross-line screens. As Austin stated, “We who have long since learned to regard the single-line screen as obsolete and to recognize the advantages of a cross-line screen in connection with an elliptical or slit diaphragm, laugh at Mr. Kurtz’s claims, and think there can be no possible cause for action from the fact that we do not nor would not use a single-line screen if we could do so without any interference.”​35​ However, Austin mused, “Do two single-line screens cemented together as a homogenous whole still retain their single line characteristics, or does the fact of their being joined together endow them with properties so totally different as to render them a distinctly different thing? Are there any properties within the possibilities of a cross-line screen that cannot be demonstrated with a single-line screen?” The caution in Austin’s words is evident. While one might scoff at the threat, it would be unwise to discount it. It was understood that many engravers would buckle under pressure, not willing to face the cost of litigation or damages. This fear gave the New York Colortype Company a decided advantage. It would take someone to stand up to the threat in court and a collective support from engravers nationwide to squash it for good.

The arguments against the validity of the patent were strong. In 1881, using his own version of orthochromatic plates and three-color separations with parallel line screens, Ives created what may be considered the first three-color halftone print.​38​ Ives figured it obvious that the screens for each plate should be at different angles to reduce moiré patterns and did not think to patent the technique. This achievement gained little notice at the time. Prints were sent to England for review in 1884 and exhibited for the first time in the United States in 1885 at the Philadelphia Novelties Exhibition. Ironically, Ives himself was sued for infringing on the Kurtz patent almost two decades after inventing the process himself.  

Ives’ contemporaries were well aware of his achievements when the Kurtz patent trouble began. Mr. Weeks, a friend of Ives, recounted his 1881 three-color printing achievement and mentioned that Ives had framed proofs of his three-color separations hanging on the walls of his Philadelphia office.​39​ Ringler was even shown these proofs when he visited Ives in Philadelphia. Weeks, calling the New York Colortype Company’s bluff, was preparing to ramp up three-color printing in his own engraving plant.

The other commonly cited example of prior art was Eugen Albert’s 1891 patent for a process of multi-color printing in Germany (Patent 6634), the claims of which are written below from a translation published in The Process Photogram and Illustrator:

“First: Multicolor printing from printing surfaces drawn by means of a series of parallel lines crossed in such a manner that the direction of the lines for each color varies by an angle of about thirty degrees, substantially as set forth.

“Second: Multicolor printing from color blocks, plates, stones, or other printing surfaces, produced by photography by means of screens or tints turned so that the direction of the lines forming the tints for each color varies by an angle of either about thirty degrees or about sixty degrees, substantially as set forth.”​37​

The Albert patent, like the Kurtz patent, was sold to a London printing firm sometime after publication, and used to threaten other British publishing houses in an attempt to corner the market. One of the threatened firms was the well-known Raithby, Lawrence & Co., Ltd., of Leicester who published C. G. Zander’s Photo-Trichromatic Printing in 1896 while under threat of litigation. They decided to hedge their bets and continue printing multi-color jobs after investigating the prior art and feeling they would have a strong defense in court. On a broader scale, had a large firm like Raithby, Lawrence & Co. ceded their color printing operations to avoid litigation, other firms would have likely followed suit. The publishing industry in Britain would have been grievously harmed, and a precedent for patent trolling would have been set.​37​

Asked about the action taken against Raithby, Lawrence & Co., Ives felt that the Albert patent was invalid for technical reasons, suggesting that a screen-angle of 22.5 degrees was more optimal for cross-line screens than 30 degrees. A printer would only have to print at an angle other than 30 degrees to avoid infringing on the Albert patent.

Ultimately, the case against Raithby, Lawrence & Co. was dropped without legal action, but it provided a useful case study for printers in the United States threatened by the holders of the Kurtz patent.

By 1902, ownership of the Kurtz patent had transferred to the American Colortype Company, incorporated in February of that year.​40​ Prior ownership of the Kurtz patent was split among several parties, which made prosecution difficult. The British Printer, in their November-December 1902 issue, published a note from the attorneys of the American Colortype Company in which they stated, “The entire interest in the Kurtz patent has now been vested in the American Colortype Company, who intend to proceed to enforce its rights. We have carefully investigated the Kurtz patent, and in our opinion, the manufacture of the so-called three-colour plates by any method now employed, or the printing from such plates, is an infringement upon the Kurtz patent.”​41​ The public had assumed the threat of the Kurtz patent had passed, but realized, to their dismay, that it had risen again to wreak havoc on the industry. It was assumed that the initial threat subsided due to an inability to defend the patent in court, when in fact, the owners were simply “biding their time.”

The British, who had gone through a similar issue with the Albert patent, were sympathetic to the cause of the American engravers. They understood that the Kurtz patent was part of an effort of corporate take-over and consolidation of three-color printing. The British Printer, wrote, quoting words from the magazine, Process Work, “‘We hear the idea is still cherished in America that it will be possible to create a monopoly of three-color printing, through ownership of the Kurtz patent for printing from three-colour blocks at angles of 60 degrees…'”​37​

The arguments that the Kurtz patent was antedated by Ives in 1881 and Albert in 1892, were again made in 1902. The British Printer was optimistic that the American public would not be “ ‘bluffed’ out of business,” just as the attempts at a take-over using the Albert patent were dismissed in Britain several years prior. If the American Colortype Company was to be taken seriously, then they needed a scapegoat of whom they could make an example in court. That scapegoat was Edward Stern & Company, Inc., of Philadelphia.

According to Stephen Horgan, litigation against Edward Stern & Company was evidently “holding up the process of three-color work” in America. Horgan wrote to Edward Stern in mid-1903, inquiring about the status of the case. Stern responded in September 1903 that action was brought against his firm in December of 1902 for infringement against the Kurtz patent. The proceeding was filed in the United States Circuit Court in Philadelphia in January of 1903. Attorneys for the American Colortype Company, Knight Brothers, began posting notices in printing publications in March 1903 for engravers to cease use of three-color plates unless licensed from the American Colortype Company.​42​ The notice is shown below.

A notice from Knight Brothers, attorneys for the American Colortype Company, to engravers to cease production of three-color plates. ​42​

The case against Edward Stern & Company was clearly highlighted in the notice as an example to other engravers of what kind of action might be taken against them should they not acquiesce. Knight Brothers, in a patronizing tone, stated they did not mean to “harass the trade,” and were simply warning engravers avoid the high cost of litigation that action against them would bring.

Public opinion varied on this case, though most were on the side of Stern. Ringler, not surprisingly, argued that that Kurtz was solely responsible for his developments, irrespective of the prior art, and that his patent should be upheld and enforced.​43​ Another wrote that the American Colortype Company had the case against Stern adjourned, and was likely stalling. It was also pointed out that the Kurtz patent did not cover other aspects of three-color printing, such as plates, screens, and inks, that were essential to color production. In general, most agreed that the Kurtz patent could not possibly cover all types of color printing and was only referring to a specific application that had become obsolete not long after the patent’s publication.

In the end, no further action was taken by the American Colortype Company in the nine months after filing its suit against Edward Stern & Company.  Nevertheless, Stern had its defense prepared and ready for battle.​36​

I could find no mention of the Kurtz patent or any threat of litigation after 1903. Patents issued in 1893 expired 17 years after publication. The American Colortype Company could have continued their quest to monopolize color printing, but the industry had moved on and collectively defended against the threat. The use of color printing was growing in mass media, and color printing technology was evolving at a rapid pace. Nothing could stop the American photoengravers from satisfying the public’s insatiable hunger for color.

William Kurtz died on December 5, 1904, at the age of 71. He continued operating his photography business in Manhattan until the time of his death.​44​

Disclaimer

This article was written by Brian Gamm in his personal capacity. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to the author’s employer, organization, committee or other group or individual with which the author has been, is currently, or will be affiliated.

  1. ​*​
    “Heliochrome” was the term used for color photographs composed of red, green, and blue transparencies layered together.
  2. ​†​
    “Coloritype” and “Colortype” were terms applied to three-color process printing.

References

  1. 1.
    Day-Baker . The Commercial Application of Three-Color Photography. Photo-Era Magazine. 1901;8:467-480. Accessed December 29, 2020. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Photo_Era_Magazine_the_American_Journal/jBjOAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
  2. 2.
    Sipley LW. A Half Century of Color. The Macmillan Company; 1951.
  3. 3.
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A color scientist with a love for the history of color.