Search Results | Caltech Archives

Title: Vauxhall Garden
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1809
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. III, London 1809-1810 Plate no. 88

Title: The Hall, Blue Coat School
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1808
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. I, London 1808 Plate no. 10

Title: Freemasons Hall, Great Queen Street
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1808
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. II, London 1809 Plate no. 38

Title: Watch House
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1809
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. III, London 1809-1810 Plate no. 91

Title: Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723)
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1684
Description: Portrait from volume two of his four-volume Werken, published in 1689. Leeuwenhoek was the son of a middle-class shopkeeper in Delft, Netherlands. He began his professional life as a cloth merchant and then served in several civil service posts in Delft. As the Court Surveyor of Holland, he acquired an interest in lens grinding and fashioned his first microscope in 1671. He communicated his observations to other scientific practitioners in letters written in Dutch that were later collected together and published in four volumes

Title: Hevelius and wife--illustration
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1673
Description: Hevelius and wife observing at sextant from Hevelius’ “Machinae Coelestis Pars Prior.” (1673).

Title: Galileo, table of observations of the Medicean Planets, from Istoria e Dimostrazioni intorno alle Macchie Solari (History and Demonstration concerning Sunspots), Rome, 1613
Format: photograph: print
Date: 1613
Description: The Medicean Planets was the name given to the moons of Jupiter which Galileo discovered with his telescope in 1610. This table of observations was made during the months of April and March, 1613, and is a daily record of the positions of the moons relative to Jupiter.

Title: Fleet Prison
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1808
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. II, London 1809 Plate no. 36

Title: Mounting Guard, St. James’s Park
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1809
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. II, London 1809 Plate no. 56

Title: Water Engine, Cold-Bath-Field’s Prison
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1808
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. I, London 1808 Plate no. 19

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: 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: New Covent Garden Theatre
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1810
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. III, London 1809-1810 Plate no. 100

Title: Francis Hauksbee: illustration of lenses and the rainbow
Format: photograph: print
Date: 1709
Description: Francis Hauksbee was the demonstrator for the Royal Society during the early years of Newton’s tenure as president. The engraving is from his book, Physico-mechanical experiments on various subjects : containing an account of several surprizing phenomena touching light and electricity, producible on the attrition of bodies : with many other remarkable appearances, not before observ’d, together with the explanations of all the machines, (the figures of which are curiously engrav’d on copper) and other apparatus us’d in making the experiments.

Title: Diagram of the human hand, from Giordano Bruno’s discussion of the properties of the number 5 in De monade numero et figura.
Format: photograph: print
Date: 1591
Description: De monade numero et figura (On the Monad, Number and Figure) is part of the trilogy of Latin verse works published in Frankfurt in 1591 and considered to be Bruno’s philosophical testament. In the De monade Bruno discusses Pythagorean number symbolism and the meanings of the numbers 1 to 10.

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: J.T Desaguliers - plate 31 from A Course of Experimental Philosophy (London, 1734-44)
Format: photograph: negative
Description: Jean Theophilus Desaguliers, a protestant refugee from France, established himself as one of the most prominent advocates of the Newtonian philosophy in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. While trying to clarify some of the theoretical aspects of Newtonianism, he also became deeply concerned with the religious, social and political implications of Newton’s work: for example, at the accession of George II in 1727 Desaguliers published a panegyric entitled The Newtonian System of the World: the best Model of Government. The “planetarium” was Desaguliers’ device to model the motions of the planets. It was three feet in diameter. When the demonstrator turned the crank, all the spheres moved in proportion to the actual mean motions of the planets.

Title: “The Lecture”
Format: photograph: print
Description: William Hogarth, “The Lecture,” reprinted in “The Works of William Hogarth,” London.