Brothers Louis Edward Levy (1846-1919) and Max Levy (1857-1926) founded a photoengraving business in Baltimore in 1875. In 1877, they moved to Philadelphia and reorganized the firm as the Levytype Company. Here they introduced their invention (jointly patented on January 4, 1875) of a new photochemical engraving process, which they called "Levy-type." The bulk of the papers consists of incoming correspondence relating to orders and shipments from 1895 to 1920, and includes letters from all parts of the United States, Europe (especially England and Germany), and more distant places such as India, Australia, and Chile.