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Title: Leg of a flea showing musculature and muscle tissue
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1684
Description: From Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’s Werken (vol. 4)

Title: William Whiston - fig.2 for A New Theory of the Earth (London, 5th edn., 1737)
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1737
Description: This figure traces the path of a comet to show how the Earth’s elliptic orbit was caused. Newton and Edmond Halley had worked hard to demonstrate that comets were predictable, periodic bodies which therefore could not be used to prognosticate divine interventions in the natural order. Yet they also suggested that comets deposited aethers to revitalize a spiritually depleted Earth. Whiston liked this mixture of close geometrical analysis with divine mechanism, and extended the discussion. He argued that comets had been responsible for key moments in the Earth’s natural and biblical history - for instance, it was a great comet that had caused the Deluge. He even equated comets with Hell: as they moved in their highly eccentric orbits, they alternated between the “Darkness of Torment” and the “ungodly Smoak of Fire.” For Whiston, comets thus became “the place of Punishment for wicked Men after the general Resurrection.”

Title: Plate from “Nova Reperta” (New Discoveries)
Format: photograph: negative
Description: Shows the use of lenses in the form of eyeglasses.

Title: Canis 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: J.T Desaguliers - plate 32 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 32nd plate shows the use of the planetarium to display the phenomena produced by the Earth’s rotation about its axis.

Title: Plate from “Ansei kenbunshi”
Format: photograph: print
Description: Damage 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: Sarpens
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: Ara
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: William Whiston - fig.7 for A New Theory of the Earth (London, 5th edn., 1737)
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1737
Description: The motion of the tides explained.

Title: Debating Society, Piccadilly
Format: photograph: print
Date: 1808
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. I, London 1808 Plate no. 29b

Title: Military College, Chelsea
Format: photograph: negative
Date: 1810
Description: Ackermann, R., The Microcosm of London, Vol. III, London 1809-1810 Plate no. 99

Title: Capricorn
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: 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: 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: 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: 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.