Joseph Koehler (1842 - May 22, 1933) was a New York based lithographer, printer, and stationer active in the late 19th and early 20th century. Koehler was born in near Reims, France, the son of a prominent medical doctor, also Joseph Koehler, once the personal physician to Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1846, when he was just 4, Koehler immigrated to the United States with his family, settling in New York City. He is tentatively credited with the invention of the 'greeting card' in 1867, when he was 21. Following on the success of his greeting card business, Koehler built an extensive postcard and calling card business, which today represents the bulk of his surviving corpus. Most of his pieces were printed at factories in Germany, France, and England. Later, in the 1890s, he established his own steam press operation at 150 Park Row - then a printing hub. Koehler, while a pioneer in half-tone printing, is better known for retaining the more labor-intensive chromolithographic process well into early 20th century due to its superior graphic effect. Most scholarship suggests he retired around 1914, but we have seen later work attributed to his firm dating to 1916, so this may be erroneous. In addition to his printing work, Koehler also imported tobacco and smoking paraphernalia. He also inherited the formula for a medicinal cure-all balm developed by his father, which he marketed as 'Arabian Balsam'. More by this mapmaker...

Charles Hart (March 10, 1824 - October 9, 1914) was a pioneering British-American lithographer active in New York from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century. Hart was born in London and immigrated to New York as a child. He briefly worked in a glassware shop before, in 1939, becoming an lithographer's apprentice under George Endicott (June 14, 1802 - 1848). Five years later in 1844 is graduated from his apprenticeship, joined the fully-paid staff of Endicott Lithography. He must have been greatly appreciated within the firm, as in 1850, his salary of 20 USD a week was among the highest in the trade. When the Endicott offices burnt to the ground in 1859, Hart moved to the firm of Robertson, Siebert and Shearman. When this partnership collapsed in 1861, Hart partnered with James Alpheus Sherman (1816 - 1890), creating the firm 'Shearman and Hart.' Shearman left the firm to peruse a legal career shortly thereafter and from this point forward, Hart published independently. Hart retired from active lithography in 1911, when his sons, Francis and Horace Hart, took over. He died in 1914. Learn More...