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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: Common Council Chamber, Guild Hall
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1808
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. II, London 1809 Plate no. 42

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: Royal Cock Pit
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1808
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. I, London 1808 Plate no. 18

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: 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.

Title: Sadlers Wells Theatre
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1809
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. III, London 1809-1810 Plate no. 69

Title: The Great Hall, Bank of England
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1808
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. I, London 1808 Plate no. 7

Title: Water spout from Benjamin Franklin “Experiments and Observations on Electricity”, 5th ed., London.
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1774

Title: Corvus
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: Great Subscription Room at Brooks’s, St. James’s Steet
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1808
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. II, London 1809 Plate no. 39