Waterman Lilly Ormsby was born Hampton, Connecticut in 1809. He attended the National Academy of Design in New York, and after graduating moved to Albaby, New York. After working in Lancaster, Massachusetts for a time, he eventually settled in New York and founded the New York Bank Note Company. Ormsby provided illustrations for The Columbian Magazine, which was the publication in which Edgar Allen Poe was published. Ormsby was also an inventor, his most famous invention being the grammagraph, which was used in pantographic engraving and allowed for the automation of varying spaces between lines to give depth to an image that was engraved. One famous product that that Ormsby used this on was on Colt revolvers starting in 1839. Ormsby died in Brooklyn, New York in 1883.