Albertype Co.

The Albertype Co., headquartered in Brooklyn, N.Y., produced postcards and other printed materials from 1890 until 1952. The Albertype Company was founded by brothers Adolph and Herman L. Wittemann. In 1890, the publishing company, originally established as the Wittemann Brothers circa 1879, changed its name to the Albertype Company, denoting the company's use of the collotype (or albertype) photographic process. The company operated from 1890 to 1952 and produced over 25,000 prints. The company utilized a specific photomechanical processes process that had been invented by Joseph Albert in Australia in the late 1860s. Albert's process was an improvement on the collotype photographic process. The company had teams of photographers who traveled across the United States taking and buying images depicting people, places, and activities in all parts of the country. The images were published as postcards and marketed to be sold in the locales depicted in the images. The Albertype Company both produced their own photographs (Adolph was a photographer), as well as reproduced photographic images produced by other companies or individual photographers. Using the prints, the company published postcards and viewbooks (also known as souvenir albums or view albums, containing commercially published groups of photographs depicting a place, activity, or event).