Besides this, Herr Mitterer is the inventor of the so-called cylinder or pilot-wheel press, which he has improved so much lately that it does almost everything that one can demand from a perfect press in point of power, speed, and ease of operation. Since 1809, I have dedicated myself almost uninterruptedly to improvements, and to the work of reducing all manipulation and processes in all branches to their simple elementary principles. Thus some of my earlier inventions--such as transfers from paper which has been inscribed with fatty inks, and the transfers from new and old books and copper-plate impressions--have been brought to a high degree of excellence through my manifold experiments, so that one can make lithographic stereotypes in the easiest manner. Furthermore I have made such progress in color printing that, besides pictures illuminated with colors, I can also produce pictures quite similar to oil paintings, so that nobody can discover that they have been printed, because they possess all the distinguishing points of paintings. At the same time I have invented a new method for printing pictures, wall tapestry, playing-cards, and even cotton, which enables two men to make two thousand impressions of the size of a sheet of letter-paper daily, even though the picture may contain a hundred or more colors. Incredible as this may seem, I surely shall produce extraordinary and amazing proofs of this in a few years if I remain alive and well. Among the other methods that I have invented since this time the most excellent are some aqua tint processes, the spatter-work method, the intaglio crayon method, the conversion of the relief method into intaglio and vice versa, and the machine-written text for editions de luxe. Among other things I also sought to remedy the difficulty which arises from the great dependence on the skill and industry of the printers. Therefore I planned a printing-machine wherein the dampening and inking of the stones should be done not by hands but by the mechanism of the press itself, which, in addition, could be operated by water and thus work almost without human intervention. With this invention I believed that I had set my art on the pinnacle of completion; and when in 1817 I exhibited a model of this press (which also was adapted by me for utilizing the principles of stone or chemical printing on metal plates) before the Royal Academy of Sciences in Munich, I was so fortunate as to receive its golden medal in sign of universal approval. But the most important of all my inventions since my employment in the service of the Royal Government was, without question, the invention of a sufficient substitute for the natural limestone plates, which often incurred well-founded censure because of their unevenness, weight, and fragility, and have the further fault of demanding a great deal of storage room.