Search Results | Caltech Archives

Title: Hamilton, Sir William, “Campi Phlegraei: Observations on the Volcanos of the Two Sicilies”, plate 37.
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1779
Description: One of 54 plates by Peter Fabris illustrating volcanis activity in the region of Naples. Sir William Hamilton was at this time royal envoy to the Count of Naples and pubished his investigations of volcanos for the Royal Society.

Title: Chelsea Hospital
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1810
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. III, London 1809-1810 Plate no. 98

Title: Kepler - “Ordo sphaerarum mundi”, from Mysterium cosmographicum
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1596

Title: Hand-painted illustration from the autograph album of Johann Jakob Frisch
Format: photograph: negative
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: St. Stephen’s, Walbrook
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1809
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. III, London 1809-1810 Plate no. 90

Title: Galileo, the Pleiades from Sidereus Nuncius (The Sidereal Messenger), Venice, 1610
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1610
Description: The observation of the Pleiades and of the previously invisible stars nearby was made possible by Galileo’s new telescope, presented to the scholars of Venice during the summer of 1609. In his published illustration of 1610 he outlined the stars that were already known and represented the others by single lines. He also tried to preserve the distinction in size.

Title: Lyra
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: Cepheus
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: Lepus
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: Kepler - Model of the Universe
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1621
Description: Model of the universe (the outermost sphere is Saturn’s) from Johannes Kepler’ s “Mysterium Cosmographicum” (1597, edition of 1621) Count Rocco Collection.

Title: Portrait of Giovanni Domenico Cassini
Format: photograph: print
Date: 1695
Description: Portrait of Cassini from his account of his heliometer in Bologna, published 40 years after its installation in La Meridiana del tempio di S. Petronio..., 1695.

Title: Galileo, illustration from the Sidereus Nuncius (the Sidereal Messenger), Frankfurt, 1610
Format: photograph: print
Date: 1610
Description: Cincvll et Ensis Orionis Asterismvs.

Title: William Whiston - title page to A New Theory of the Earth, 5th edition (London, 1737)
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1737
Description: Whiston succeeded Isaac Newton as third Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University in 1701. An early apostle of Newtonian philosophy, he entered the debate on Biblical chronology with his book, “A New Theory of the Earth” (1696), which sought to refute the widely read work of Thomas Burnet, “The Sacred Theory of the Earth.” Although both Whiston and Burnet were to some degree skeptical of Biblical (or Mosaic) accounts of creation, Whiston proposed a theory that the flood was caused by the impact of a comet.

Title: Tattersall’s, Horse Repository
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1809
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. III, London 1809-1810 Plate no. 83

Title: Canis Minor
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: 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: Ursa Minor
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: Title page: “Nova Reperta” (New Discoveries)
Format: photograph: negative
Description: Shows nine new discoveries of the time. The collection consists of twenty plates showing new discoveries, including navigation by compass. Watson Collection, History of Science.

Title: Workhouse, St. James’s Parish
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1809
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. III, London 1809-1810 Plate no. 96

Title: Galileo, title page from Le Operazione del Compasso Geometrico et Militare (The Operation of the Geometric and Military Compass), Padua, 1606
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1606
Description: The Compasso was Galileo’s first published book and was printed in Padua, where he had taught mathematics at the University since 1592. Written in the vernacular, the book was directed to a wide audience. It was dedicated to Cosimo II de’ Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who had been one of Galileo’s students and who would hire him as his philosopher and mathematician a few years later.