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scott fandangoBarry, a bit more info as i have done much research in the process due to my T201 collection....
Actually Ives used a little different method then the simple stone lithograph.....As a boy, Ives was apprenticed to a printer at the Litchfield Enquirer, where he became interested in photography. By the time he was 18 years old, he was in charge of the Cornell University photographic laboratory. While there, he developed an early halftone process using a gelatin relief. He continued to improve this process, and in 1881 he worked on the first commercial production of halftone printing plates using his method; in 1885 he introduced an improved halftone screen.
...Take for instance the T201 Mecca double folders, one of the first cards to use the new halftone relief process, and also the first to have stats on the back, first to fold and have to images-----simply a revoltuionary issue....
they were made using a state of the art printing process known as COLOR HALFTONE RELIEF...Before these, most cards were made using the wood (or stone) engraving process to lay several colors on paper.......The T201, frequently confused as lithographs, are in fact halftone reliefs, not lithography....this is more easily seen using a 10X loupe, as you can see the Red, Blue, Yellow, and Black dots making up the halftone image
the true name for the type of card is Chromoxylography....it was an off shoot of the Photomechanical Printing process invented by Frederick Ives of Cornell University.......the "ives Process" as it was known at the time used crossline halftone engraved electroplates to produce images.... this process revolutionized American Publishing because before this, each image took many many hours to create using wood etchings and was expensive....
...this new process made it much cheaper, quicker and easier to produce images...now Publishers could include illustrations, cover art, and many others graphics that were once reserved for only the most expensive books and posters....
Eventually this process of printing made its wat to the baseball card field in the early 1900's.... the American Tobacco Company, having now to compete with Turkish Cigarettes (no cards were made from 1895 to 1909 because the Tobacco companies had a Monopoly and there was no need to add cards to compete--the monopoly was broken in 1908 under the Sherman Antitrust ACT), decided to make their brands of cigarettes more attractive and included color cards...the first was 1911 Mecca Brand double folders, T206, T205,the T3 Turkey Red Cabinets followed by 1912 Hassan Brand Triple folders....The "mecca , Hassan and Turkey Red" were Turkish style names to try to compete with the Turkish (camel) Brands
.....Another interesting Tidbit...Since the Library of Congress defines a cigarette card as " a 19th century mounted photograph", technically this in not a cigarette card even though they were distributed in packs of Mecca Cigarrettes of the AMerican Tobacco Company....the front of the card was not attached to the back like t206, this card was created by printing on the back and front to create the unique shared legs aspect....