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Title: Pisces
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: 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: Kepler - Table II, from Mysterium cosmographicum
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1596

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

Title: Portions of buckwheat plant
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1684
Description: From Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’s Werken (vol. 2)

Title: Francis Hauksbee: illustration of microscope and lantern
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: Illustration of Torbern Bergman’s chemical apparatus from Opuscula Physica et Chemica.
Format: photograph: print
Date: 1784
Description: This translation from the original Latin is by Edmund Cullen. It includes notes and illustrations by Cullen and was published in 1784 by J. Murray, London.

Title: Corona
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: Ursa Major
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: Galileo, portrait of three astronomers, frontispiece from Systema Cosmicum, Augustae Treboc. [Strasbourg], 1635
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1635
Description: In the first Latin edition of the Dialogo, the portrait has been reengraved and significantly altered from the Italian original. Two columns have been added, and above them the curtain with the dedication to Galileo’s patron, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, is held not by Italian putti but by little angels, who also support the Medici crest. The astronomers’ poses are similar to the original, but Copernicus looks out toward the reader and holds his model of the heliocentric system in a more prominent position. The names of the astronomers are engraved in the ground rather than on their garments. The arrow points more clearly to Copernicus. The small stones on the ground, much more than in the Italian version, appear to represent the the configuration of sun and planets.

Title: Lambeth Palace
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1808
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. II, London 1809 Plate no. 48

Title: Tissue, vessels, and structures found inside a flea’s leg
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1684
Description: From Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’s Werken (vol. 4)

Title: Scorpio
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: Galileo, illustration of the use of the compass, from Le Operazione del Compasso Geometrico et Militare (The Operation of the Geometric and Military Compass), Padua, 1606
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1606
Description: Galileo designed his geometric and military compass (“compasso geometrico e militare”) in 1597. Known in English as the sector, the compass was widely used until the invention of logarithmic tables. In Galileo’s model, an arc could be inserted between the two arms of the compass to make the instrument into a quadrant. A plumb bob could be attached.

Title: Plate from “Ansei kenbunshi”
Format: photograph: print
Description: Fire following the great earthquake of 1855 near Tokyo (the “Ansei earthquake”). Accounts of the disaster were suppressed by the government, making them today extremely rare. This plate is from “Ansei kenbunshi” (Observations of the Ansei Era), printed in Tokyo, 1856. George W. Housner book collection.

Title: An early observation of weather conditions in Siena
Format: photograph: print
Date: 1798
Description: An early observation of weather conditions at the time of an earthquake in Siena, Italy, May 26, 1798. The published account of this earthquake is one of the first such to adopt an empirical approach to understanding the phenomenon. George W. Housner Rare Book Collection.

Title: Foundling Hospital, The Chapel
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1808
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. II, London 1809 Plate no. 37

Title: Court of Common Pleas, Westminister Hall
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1808
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. I, London 1808 Plate no. 23