Search Results | Caltech Archives

Title: Cetus
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: Pegasus
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: Illustration from Kepler’s “Harmonices Mundi” (Harmonies of the World).
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1619
Description: Rocco Collection, History of Science.

Title: Newton - frontispiece to the Method of Fluxions
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1736
Description: Isaac Newton & John Colson (editor & “perpetual commentator”) The Method of Fluxions and Infinite Series (Cambridge, 1736) John Colson was Cambridge University’s fifth Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. The image accompanied a text that was published to evince Newton’s priority of the calculus and to respond to attacks on “infidel mathematicians” by men such as George Berkeley. Colson hoped to show that the calculus is a rational and tangible means of expressing real motions in real space. To explain the second derivative Colson has the reader imagine an attempt to pot two ducks with one shot. The bottom fowl flies at a constant velocity while the top flies with a uniformly accelerating motion, thus representing “contemporaneous fluents.” The “fluent” curve which the hunter’s eye traces represents the second derivative.

Title: Draco
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: J.-A. Nollet’s popular public lectures on physics
Format: photograph: print
Date: 1757
Description: J.-A. Nollet’s popular public lectures on physics given in Paris during the 1730s included demonstrations on some 350 different instruments. The lectures were published in 6 volumes as Leçons de physique experimentale and then widely translated, into Italian, English, German, Spanish, and Russian. This page is from the Spanish edition, Lecciones de physica experimental, of 1757. George W. Housner Rare Book Collection.

Title: John Keill - title page for An Examination of Dr. Burnet’s Theory of the Earth: with some Remarks on Mr. Whiston’s New Theory of the Earth (London, 1734)
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1734
Description: John Keill, Oxford’s Savilian Professor of Mathematics, was one of the principal apostles of Newtonian mathematics who helped to establish Newton reputation in the face of the claims of Leibniz and others. in this work Keill attacked Thomas Burnet for his Cartesian Sacred Theory of the Earth, and William Whiston for his own natural philosophical account of the Earth’s early history. Keill accused Burnet of manifesting arrogance by proposing a systematic solution to such difficult problems - and he pointed out that Newton had proved in his Principia that the vortices to which Descartes appealed were physically impossible. In his assault on Whiston, he singled out the latter’s argument that a comet had given rise to Noah’s flood and, in consequence, the oceans that persist today.

Title: 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: Temple Church
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1809
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. III, London 1809-1810 Plate no. 84

Title: Galileo, table of sunspot observations, from Istoria e Dimostrazioni intorno alle Macchie Solari (History and Demonstration concerning Sunspots), Rome, 1613
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1613
Description: A set of observations of sunspots made by Galileo during the period from 21 October to 14 December, 1611.

Title: “Scrooge’s third visitor”--Dickens
Format: photograph: negative

Title: Whitehall
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1809
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. III, London 1809-1810 Plate no. 95

Title: Dodart, D. Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des plantes.
Format: photograph: print
Date: 1676
Description: With a pharmacy and botanic garden in the background, Dodart’s seventeenth-century vignette depicts the process of preparing medical simples from plant to bottle. While laborers toil at the scales and distilling furnace, gentlemen-philosophers, clerics and physicians discuss the latest developments in pharmacoepia.

Title: Galileo, two illustrations of the moon from Sidereus Nuncius (The Sidereal Messenger), Venice, 1610
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1610
Description: Two illustrations of features of the moon’s surface, showing strong light and dark shadings on the light side. According to the prevailing Aristotelian cosmology, heavenly bodies were perfectly smooth and spherical. Galileo’s observations of the moon’s roughness tended to support the new Copernican system, which no longer upheld the distinction between terrestrial and heavenly bodies.

Title: Dining Hall, Asylum
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1808
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. I, London 1808 Plate no. 5

Title: Kepler - Foldout, from De Cometis
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1619