Background
Karel Vaclav Klic was born on May 30, 1841, in Arnau, Czech Republic. His father had a photographic studio.
graphic artist inventor printer
Karel Vaclav Klic was born on May 30, 1841, in Arnau, Czech Republic. His father had a photographic studio.
Klic worked in his father's photographic studio for a while, then began making drawings and woodcuts for publications. To improve the typical woodcut reproduction, he began photochemical experiments, opening his own shop, Photochemische Werkstaette, in Vienna in 1871. He made zinc plates by an asphalt process, then studied halftone screens and the use of carbon tissue as a photoresist in copper plates and in photo intaglio reproduction.
In 1878 Klic invented the most precise (though slow) commercial photogravure printing method. He sold the process in Vienna, Brussels, and Paris in 1881, and, in 1883, to Annan and Swan in London and to a firm in Munich. Then, in 1890, he sold it to Storey Brothers & Co. Ltd. of Lancaster, Lancashire, England. The first commercial operation of the process is considered to have occurred on October 11, 1893. The Storeys formed Rembrandt Intaglio Printing Company, Ltd., in 1895, the first rotogravure firm, and Klic was put in charge of the technical aspects of the business. He also joined as a partner in the firm, waiving his right to sell the process to anyone else. He returned to Vienna in 1897, making frequent trips to the Rembrandt plant until World War I.