These digitized collections are accessible for purposes of education and research. Due to the nature of archival collections, archivists at the Caltech Archives and Special Collections are not always able to identify copyright and rights of privacy, publicity, or trademark. We are eager to hear from any rights holders, so that we may obtain accurate information. Upon request, we’ll remove material from public view while we address a rights issue.
Caltech Images Collection
Our online Image Archive of over 10,000 photographs documents Caltech’s history and consists of historic and contemporary images of Institute life. It includes images of faculty, staff, trustees, notable visitors, and other affiliated people, along with campus buildings, laboratories, events, and student activities. Also included in our collection are photographs of scientific apparatus and artifacts and fine art, as well as illustrations and prints reproduced from Caltech’s rare book collection in the history of science.
Digital reproductions of images may be requested for both professional and personal use by permission. Please email us at archives@caltech.edu with requests.
The Caltech Images Collection is also available to search and browse on JSTOR.
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Fine Art
Our collection of fine art images, predominantly focused on the history of science, includes prints of period portraits of scientists from the Earnest C. Watson collection, cartographic prints, and a rare set of Japanese folkloric prints on earthquakes donated by George W. Housner.
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Plates from Rare Books
This collection of images is drawn from our library of first editions of Copernicus, Johann Bayer, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, Hevelius, Newton, and many others from the Scientific Revolution. Holdings also include early printed accounts of earthquakes beginning in 1531, early works of cartography, and a complete set of R. A. Ackermann’s Microcosm of London (1808).
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Scientific Instruments
These photographs document historic laboratory instruments, many of them unique to Caltech. On view here is vintage apparatus of important American and European makers, including Beckman Instruments, Fred C. Henson Company, J. A. Brashear, Weston Electrical Instrument Corporation, Western Electric, Leeds & Northrup, Keuffel & Esser, Cambridge & Paul, Kelvin & James White, Adam Hilger, Otto Wolff, Zeiss, and many others.