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Title: Excise Office, Broad St.
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1810
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. III, London 1809-1810 Plate no. 103

Title: Queen’s Palace, St. James’s Park
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1809
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. III, London 1809-1810 Plate no. 65

Title: Kings Bench Prison
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1808
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. II, London 1809 Plate no. 46

Title: Dephinus
Format: print: engraving
Date: 1603
Description: From Johann Bayer’s “Uranometria” (1603), the first ‘true’ star-atlas. This and other copper-engraved images from the book demonstrate a notable feature of this atlas: the sheer beauty of the plates. Alexander Mair, the artist, clearly found some inspiration in the De Gheyn engravings in the Aratea published by Hugo Grotius in 1600, but most of Bayer’s constellation figures have no known prototype. Significantly, each plate has a carefully engraved grid, so that star positions can be read off to fractions of a degree. These positions were taken, not from Ptolemy’s catalog, but from the catalog of Tycho Brahe, which had circulated in manuscript in the 1590s, yet not printed until 1602. Another important feature of the atlas was the introduction of a new system of stellar nomenclature, Bayer assigning Greek letters to the brighter stars, generally in the order of magnitude.

Title: India House, The Sale Room
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1808
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. II, London 1809 Plate no. 45

Title: Covent Garden Market, Westminister Election
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1808
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. I, London 1808 Plate no. 26

Title: Title page of Isaac Newton’s Principia (Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica), first edition, published in London, 1687
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1687
Description: This celebrated work set forth the principles of dynamics and expounded Newton’s system of the world, based upon his concept of universal gravitation. The title page names him the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, and a member of the Royal Society.

Title: Taurus
Format: print: engraving
Date: 1603
Description: From Johann Bayer’s “Uranometria” (1603), the first ‘true’ star-atlas. This and other copper-engraved images from the book demonstrate a notable feature of this atlas: the sheer beauty of the plates. Alexander Mair, the artist, clearly found some inspiration in the De Gheyn engravings in the Aratea published by Hugo Grotius in 1600, but most of Bayer’s constellation figures have no known prototype. Significantly, each plate has a carefully engraved grid, so that star positions can be read off to fractions of a degree. These positions were taken, not from Ptolemy’s catalog, but from the catalog of Tycho Brahe, which had circulated in manuscript in the 1590s, yet not printed until 1602. Another important feature of the atlas was the introduction of a new system of stellar nomenclature, Bayer assigning Greek letters to the brighter stars, generally in the order of magnitude.

Title: Perspective rendering and plan of the Stjerneborg (Stellaburg) observatory on the island of Hven, from Tycho Brahe, Astronomiae Instauratae Mechanica
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1602

Title: Astronomical sextant for measuring altitudes, from Tycho Brahe, Astronomiae Instauratae Mechanica
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1602

Title: Lupus
Format: print: engraving
Date: 1603
Description: From Johann Bayer’s “Uranometria” (1603), the first ‘true’ star-atlas. This and other copper-engraved images from the book demonstrate a notable feature of this atlas: the sheer beauty of the plates. Alexander Mair, the artist, clearly found some inspiration in the De Gheyn engravings in the Aratea published by Hugo Grotius in 1600, but most of Bayer’s constellation figures have no known prototype. Significantly, each plate has a carefully engraved grid, so that star positions can be read off to fractions of a degree. These positions were taken, not from Ptolemy’s catalog, but from the catalog of Tycho Brahe, which had circulated in manuscript in the 1590s, yet not printed until 1602. Another important feature of the atlas was the introduction of a new system of stellar nomenclature, Bayer assigning Greek letters to the brighter stars, generally in the order of magnitude.

Title: South Sea House, Dividend Hall
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1810
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. III, London 1809-1810 Plate no. 102

Title: tile page: Oculus Enoch et Eliae, sive Radius Sideromysticus pars Prima
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1645
Description: Anton Maria Schyrleus (1597-1660) was a Capuchin priest and professor, who worked in Bohemia, Trier and Ravenna. His astronomical work was completed in the low countries in the 1640s, and resulted in this rather unusual work -- a richly illustrated example of baroque natural philosophy. The Oculus might be considered a mystical work, reflecting the harmonies of an earth-centered, Tychonic cosmos in scriptural terms. The illustrations give a vivid impression of its combination of technical astronomy and mechanics with rich symbolism.

Title: Page from the autograph album of Johann Jakob Frisch
Format: photograph: print
Date: 1624
Description: Frisch was a nephew of Johannes Kepler. The album was kept by Frisch while a law student at the University of Tubingen (from 1624 to 1631), where Kepler himself also had studied. Autograph entries are typicaly in Latin, and range from a few lines of verse or prose to elaborate miniature illustrations, comic and serious. Kepler’s autograph is included in the book within a Latin inscription dated 1625.

Title: Newgate Chapel
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1809
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. II, London 1809 Plate no. 57

Title: Kepler, “Harmonices mundi” (Harmonies of the World)
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1619
Description: Illustration from Book III, chapter 10, “concerning the Tetrachords...,” in which attributes of musical scales are discussed. Rocco Collection, History of Science.

Title: Lloyd’s Subscription Room
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1809
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. II, London 1809 Plate no. 49