Europe

Consider this geometrical drawing, portrayed with true perspective and a mastery of light and shadow. It comes from a treatise on art and mathematics by Luca Pacioli, yet it was not drawn by Pacioli.

Astronomers and artists alike studied the science of perspective. The title page of the Sidereus nuncius refers to the telescope as a little “perspective tube” (perspicilli).

Many textbooks begin their list of early microscopists with Leeuwenhoek, who published most of his discoveries in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. This volume is an anthology of many of those articles. Leeuwenhoek’s microscope had only a single, powerful lens.

Greek writers compiled ancient stories of the constellations, often in poetic form, with memorable instructions for locating bright stars and zodiac constellations. Constellations of the zodiac contain the wandering courses of the planets and the annual path of the Sun.

The frontispiece depicts a variety of optical phenomena: Reflection. Refraction. Perspective. The rainbow. Burning mirrors.

Von Littrow, Director of the Vienna Observatory, adopted Bode’s constellation figures and star positions. In von Littrow’s atlas, the constellation figures appear faintly in the background.

Constellation figures remained popular in education, as in these constellation cards which make learning the constellations easy. The set includes 32 cards, each focused upon one or a few constellations.

Niccolò Tartaglia argued for the use of mathematics in physics, engineering and art. Tartaglia’s frontispiece shows Euclid guarding the gate of knowledge. Just inside, Perspectiva stands among the sciences that open the way to Philosophia.

Astronomers and artists alike studied the science of perspective. The title page of the Sidereus nuncius refers to the telescope as a little “perspective tube” (perspicilli).

The Forbidden City was home to the Chinese Emperor and the political center of Chinese government for hundreds of years. Despite occasional tensions, Jesuits from Schall in the 17th century to Gaubil in the 18th century were granted admission as advisors.

Astronomers and artists alike studied the science of perspective. The title page of the Sidereus nuncius refers to the telescope as a little “perspective tube” (perspicilli).

This is the scarce first edition of writings by a leading learned society in Bologna, the Accademia dei Gelati. The volume includes striking woodcuts by the astronomer Geminiano Montanari of white stars against a black background.

Abu Ma’shar, an astronomer in 9th century Baghdad, was one of the most prolific writers on astrology during the Middle Ages. This work was cited by Albert the Great, Roger Bacon, Pierre d’Ailly, and Pico della Mirandola, among others.

This is a replica of a microscope that is very much like one of the microscopes Galileo might have created. Indeed, it was once believed to have been made by Galileo, but is now attributed to Campani.

Hooke’s Micrographia is the most remarkable visual treatise of 17th century microscopy. In describing the appearance of cork, Hooke coined the term “cell.” Hooke’s large fold-out plate of the flea is unforgettable.

Accurate depiction of the topography of the Moon was accomplished by mid-century in this lunar atlas by Hevelius. It set a new standard for precision that remained unmatched for a century.

Kepler’s star map shows the constellations of Ophiuchus (the Serpent Handler), Sagittarius and Scorpius. The Milky Way runs diagonally down from the left, and the “ecliptic,” or annual path of the Sun, runs horizontally through Sagittarius and Scorpius.

Copernicus argued that the Sun rather than the Earth lies in the center of the universe. The Earth moves as a planet around the Sun, carrying its Moon along as a satellite. In 1543 little proof was available that the Earth moves; there were many reasons not to accept it.

Euclid was the starting point for any further study of optics and perspective. Optics combined geometry, experiment, vision and art. In the presentation of the geometrical solids, this copy retains the original pop-ups.

After his trial, Galileo remained under house arrest until his death on Jan 8, 1642. His will directed that his remains should be placed beside those of his father Vincenzo in the Church of Santa Croce.

This anthology of the works of Alberti, a humanist scholar, contains the printed edition of his treatise, “On Painting,” a work he originally dedicated to Brunelleschi.

For this first edition of Ptolemy’s collected works, Johann Honter drew constellation figures after the manner of Albrecht Dürer. The figures appear in contemporary dress rather than in a classical style.

The Perspectiva of Peckham (13th century) became the established university textbook on perspective. It was the text Galileo likely used in his early studies of optics. Renaissance artists were well-versed in the classic works on perspective.

This landmark work by Albrecht Dürer presents several variations on the technique of “Alberti’s window.” Here the artist is creating a drawing of a lute with true perspective by means of a string drawn from the object, through the canvas window, to the vanishing point on the wall.

While visiting Florence, Niceron was shown a unique perspective drawing tool devised by the painter Cigoli, one of Galileo’s friends. He viewed examples of anamorphic drawing techniques and Alberti’s perspective boxes. All of these make an appearance in this treatise.

Adams’ work remained in publication for decades helping generations of microscopists and hobbyists explore the unseen world.  

This is the first English translation of Newton’s masterwork in physics. The Copernican idea that the Earth moves as a planet required a thorough revision of physics. Galileo undertook this task in his Discourse on Two New Sciences, published 80 years after Copernicus.

This book is without doubt the most handsome anatomical work of the 16th century. Vesalius was fortunate to team up with Jan Stephan van Calcar, a world class artist. Even the human skeletons reveal an aesthetic appreciation of the human body.

Euclid was the starting point for a mathematical approach to physics. This is the 1st printed edition. The beautiful woodcuts are hand-colored in this copy. The text of the first page was printed in both black and red ink. The geometrical diagrams were quite difficult to prepare.

On the Island of Hven, Tycho Brahe built a Renaissance research center called Uraniborg, “City of the Stars.” The first book printed on Tycho’s printing press at Uraniborg displays his motto, “looking up, I look down.” That motto symbolized his aim of coordinating the study of astronomy,...

“I thank you because you were the first one, and practically the only one, to have complete faith in my assertions.” – Galileo In this public letter, Kepler expressed support for Galileo’s telescopic discoveries.

Borgi’s book on the abacus was the most important commercial arithmetic manual in Renaissance Italy. Around 1200, Leonardo of Pisa, also known as Fibonnacci, wrote an earlier manual for the abacus which introduced a sign for zero, Hindu-Arabic numerals, and a base-10 place value system.

Featuring Galileo's Handwritting. Galileo dedicated the manual for his engineering compass to young Cosimo II de Medici, whom he had tutored in mathematics the previous summer.

Dante’s love for astronomy pervaded this epic poem. Not by accident did he bring each of the three volumes to a close with the word “stelle,” or star.

Six chief world systems were debated in Galileo’s world: • Ptolemaic: All planets revolve around the central Earth. Geocentric. • Platonic: Like the Ptolemaic, except switches the positions of Venus and Mercury. Geocentric. • Cappellan or Egyptian: Venus and Mercury revolve around the Sun.

In his dialog entitled The Timaeus, Plato taught that the cosmos is constructed from regular geometrical figures known as the Pythagorean solids. Wherever one finds an emphasis upon mathematical demonstrations in science, one may credit Plato and the Pythagoreans.

Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaios) lived in Alexandria, Egypt, in the second century. Ptolemy’s technical work on astronomy, originally written in Greek, was titled Almagest (“The Greatest”) by its Arabic translators.

In response to gathering criticism, Galileo in 1615 wrote a reconciliation of Scripture and Copernicanism which circulated in manuscript as the Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina. This is the first printed edition, which appeared in 1636.

In the most lavishly illustrated book of the 1400’s, solid spheres ceaselessly turn, carrying the planets and filling the universe between the outermost heaven and the central Earth.

This book recounts the establishment of the Jesuit mission in China in the late 1500s led by Matteo Ricci. When Ricci predicted a solar eclipse in 1592 with greater accuracy than the astronomers of the Chinese court, Emperor Wan-li invited Ricci to Beijing.

This is a replica of an original polyhedral sundial created by Stefano Buonsignori in Florence in 1587, held in the Museo Galileo in Florence.

In this poster-sized work, the first publication of observations made with a microscope, Cesi and Stelluti studied the anatomy of the bee. The text includes classical references to bees as well as new knowledge, integrated in a tabular outline.

Scheiner, a Jesuit astronomer, eventually published the definitive work of the 17th century on sunspots, in which he accepted Galileo’s argument that sunspots “move like ships” on the surface of the Sun.

In this translation of Huygens’ Kosmotheoros, Huygens took up questions of the habitability of other planets and the existence of extraterrestrial life. These topics were also considered by Kepler, Wilkins and other popular writers.

Confucius lived in the early 5th century BCE, roughly contemporary with the Pythagoreans and Presocratic natural philosophers. Confucius taught: “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself,” an early version of the Golden Rule.

This is the earliest published work on agriculture, a manual for managing a feudal estate. It is an ancestor to the early printed herbals, and explains what plants one must cultivate to be able to make the common remedies.

For Robert Fludd, the universe is a monochord, its physical structure unintelligible without an understanding of music. In another section of the book, Fludd depicts the universe as a Temple of Music.

Chaucer’s astronomical knowledge, like Dante’s, was anything but casual; in addition to his stories, this volume also contains his detailed technical manual for use of the astrolabe.

Agricola described early modern mining and metallurgy practices throughout the German speaking areas of Europe. The remarkable illustrations make this work a paramount example of how abundant visual representations in the Printing Revolution transformed science and technology.

Schickard, a friend of Kepler’s, designed this planisphere or “astroscopium” to calculate the positions of the stars for any day and hour of the year. Schickard also devised a calculating machine to produce astronomical tables according to Kepler’s laws.

In this introduction to astronomy and geography, the Moon lies embedded within a solid sphere carrying it around the Earth once a month. The solid sphere explains why the same side of the Moon always faces the Earth.

This volume contains the first English translations of any of Galileo’s works, including Galileo’s Dialogue on the Two Chief Systems of the World, the book for which he was put on trial.

In a work entitled “On the Universe,” Aristotle argued that a 5th element, called ether or the quintessence, composes the celestial spheres that naturally rotate in place above the region where the four lower elements mix together beneath the Moon.

Newton’s mathematical physics established an understanding of the dynamics of the solar system.

Ariosto’s famous epic poem is a lively, rambling, serial escapade from one humorous, ironic, sometimes ribald tall-tale to another. One example is the story of Duke Astolfo, Orlando’s cousin, who flew to the Moon in a chariot pulled by winged horses.

Bernardino Baldi was an Italian mathematician whose work gives insight into the milieu of Galileo. This is one of two autograph manuscripts by Baldi held by the Collections.

These 3 broadsides, issued approximately 2 weeks apart, contain the first detailed illustrations of Mars.

A Chinese celestial atlas and chronological tables, reproduced in Williams’ own hand, appear in this record of 372 comet sightings from 611 B.C.E. to 1640 C.E.

In Natural Magick, della Porta described an optical tube he designed to make far things appear as though they were near. The field of optics was often associated with magical tricks and illusions, and for that reason sometimes held suspect among non-mathematicians.

What Aristotle did for animals, his student Theophrastus did for plants, making the study of plants an essential topic for ancient natural philosophers. Theophrastus sought not merely to describe the appearances of plants, but like his mentor Aristotle, to ascertain their causes.

Galileo kept the design of his engineering compass carefully guarded, yet a dispute over intellectual property rights ensued. In 1607, Baldassar Capra published under his own name a Latin translation of Galileo's Compasso, including instructions for making the instrument.

Tartaglia, a teacher of a teacher of Galileo, produced the first vernacular translation of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry.

This manuscript contains two transcriptions of a university lecture by Erasmus Reinhold. The diagrams are nearly identical to Aristotle’s discussion of halos in the Meteorology. Reinhold was a well-known Wittenberg astronomer, sympathetic to Copernicus.

Della Porta explored various ideas for steam powered machines following the example of Hero of Alexandria. In antiquity, Hero fashioned marvelous automata using steam, air pressure, and hydraulics.

This is Kepler’s famous pretzel diagram, where he focused attention on the planet rather than the rotating solid sphere which carried the planet. In an Earth-centered system, the planet must follow some kind of similar pretzel path as it is carried along within a thick solid sphere.

Galileo’s Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina provides a modern example of the book arts. The outer case opens to show a smaller case, the size of a miniature version published a century ago. The 1967 edition fits entirely within the circumference of a nickel.

This book is Schall’s account of the Jesuit mission in China after Ricci. Working closely with Chinese collaborators, Schall oversaw the publication of more than 30 scientific works in Chinese which drew upon Galileo, Copernicus, Tycho, Kepler and John Napier.

This work by Macrobius (5th century) illustrates the wealth of ancient and early medieval literary sources relevant to cosmology. Macrobius here comments upon a classic story of Cicero which described a vision given to the Roman general Scipio.

Free medical care from the medieval Abbess who composed music, rebuked rulers, saw visions and wrote many books: In the Middle Ages, convents were places where anyone might seek free health care.

The Latin edition of this work mentioned the Lincean explorer, or microscope. This Italian translation of Ferrari’s work on flower gardens, published after Galileo’s trial in 1633, expunged any mention of the Academy of the Lynx.

In astrology, a “climactic year” marks a turning point, a moment of greatest risk. The preface explains that 1679 was Hevelius’ climactic year, for in that year his observatory burned. Fire destroyed manuscripts, books and instruments, including his sextant. He was 67 years old.

The secret of silk farming spread from China to Korea and India about the beginning of the Common Era. Its international trade led to the establishment of the Silk Road, which extended over 4,000 miles and connected the major ancient and medieval civilizations from China to Asia Minor.

Best known work of early modern anatomy: Vesalius was fortunate to team up with Jan Stephan van Calcar, a world class artist. Even the human skeletons reveal an aesthetic appreciation of the human body.

Pliny’s Natural History defined the scope and breadth of the field of natural history. Natural history meant the description (or “historia”) of nature, as opposed to explaining its causes (or “natural philosophy”). Pliny died in 79 CE while investigating the eruption of Mt.

Members of the Academy of the Lynx preferred to communicate with each other in code. Della Porta was the most accomplished cryptographer of the Renaissance. This work includes a set of movable cipher disks to code and decode messages.

This work, first published in the year of Galileo’s trial (1633), contains the first use of microscopic illustration in a botanical work. Ferrari described many exotic plants, including limes, lemons and pomegranates, and citron, which he prescribed as medicinal plants against scurvy.

Edmond Halley, later of cometary fame, sailed to the South Pacific island of St. Helena. Over a period of 2 years, Halley recorded the positions of 341 southern stars in this table of the right ascensions and distances of the principal southern stars.

In this book, Grassi responded to the criticism of Guiducci/Galileo. Comets seemed to provide a test of the Copernican and Tychonic systems: if the Earth were moving, then with three comets, one might have hoped to see at least one of them retrograding.

The Geneva Bible was the first lay study Bible, written in the vernacular, portable, affordable, and designed with cross-references and explanatory notes for self-study. It was the Bible of Shakespeare, of the Puritans, of settlers in the colonies of New England, and of Scotland.

Medieval remedies and natural knowledge: An explosion of 16th-century herbals dramatically extended the “materia medica” tradition deriving from ancient writers, assimilating a vast increase in the number of known plants.

Back in Rome, Kircher collected all the information he could gather from Jesuits in China, publishing this massive encyclopedia on China, Tibet, India, Korea and Japan. It contains two notable early maps, numerous portraits, and an introduction to Sanskrit and Chinese characters.

Ptolemy’s influential music theory was related to his astronomy. Through sight, we apprehend beauty through astronomy. Through hearing, we apprehend beauty through harmony.

Although Galileo rushed to print his telescopic observations, he did not invent the telescope. Jacob Metius was one of several Dutchmen with a claim to the invention of the telescope. This book by Jacob’s brother mentions Jacob’s telescopic observations of the satellites of Jupiter.

Topsell’s natural history includes both familiar and exotic creatures, drawn from sources both new and old. Topsell describes the horse, reindeer and chameleon. He portrays the magnificent appearance of the rhinoceros in the artistic tradition of Dürer.

The 19th century saw an unprecedented expansion of known objects in the universe. William and Caroline Herschel conducted a comprehensive search of northern skies with telescopes powerful enough to resolve many nebulae into star clusters.

In the Scandaglio, Galileo’s friends tried to refute Grassi’s Astronomical Balance. This obscure and mysterious work appeared under the name of the brother of the better-known Francesco Stelluti, one of the founders of the Academy of the Lynx and friend of Galileo and Prince Cesi.

Although best known for his astronomy, Ptolemy (2nd century) brought the same mathematical methods to bear on various topics, including optics, geography, and astrology. This is the first printed edition of his geography, which established mathematical methods in cartography.

Not all versions of Euclid’s Elements were created equal. Clavius prepared this edition for his students at the Rome College (Collegio Romano). If these editions of Euclid were used in different courses, which course would you take?

After a century of calculating instrument innovation, Partridge created the slide-rule. Edmund Gunter designed a logarithmic scale in 1620. William Oughtred placed two logarithmic scales side-by-side to perform multiplication and division in 1630.

Drawing upon Archimedes, Lorini asserted that all machines of the fortress could be reduced to the balance and thus to the lever. From his home in Padua, Galileo taught a private course on fortifications from about 1592 to 1609.

After Capra, the design of Galileo’s compass became widely known. Later editions included illustrations of Galileo’s instrument.

Nocturnal dials tell time by the stars. This instrument replicates an original nocturnal dial created by Girolano della Volpaia in Florence in 1569, held in the Museo Galileo in Florence.

In a work entitled “On the Universe,” Aristotle argued that a 5th element, called ether or the quintessence, composes the celestial spheres that naturally rotate in place above the region where the four lower elements mix together beneath the Moon.

Kepler’s contributions reached far beyond the realm of astronomy, to meteorology, mathematics, geology, mineralogy and crystallography. Kepler published this 24-page pamphlet, a study of the snowflake, as a New Year’s greeting for a friend.

Copernicus argued that the Sun rather than the Earth lies in the center of the universe. The Earth moves as a planet around the Sun. In 1543 little proof was available that the Earth moves; there were many reasons not to accept it.

Artful lithographs of the Milkyway from a leading English observatory.

Bode created a new constellation, Herschels Teleskop, near Auriga, to honor William Herschel’s discovery of Uranus in 1781. This Bode-Fortin-Flamsteed atlas is a 1782 German edition of Fortin’s 1776 reprinting of Flamsteed’s 1729 atlas.

This “theater of machines” parades 40 different machines for any kind of purpose, whether a lock on a river, a book press or engraving press, or a device to prevent smoke from filling a room.Unlike the writings of Lorini and Galileo, which included theoretical investigations on the principles of...

The Carmelite theologian Foscarini defended Copernicanism as compatible with Scripture in this open letter, originally printed in Naples in 1615. Foscarini employed arguments similar to Galileo’s own Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, penned in the same year.

For two decades, Tycho and his assistants at Uraniborg produced thousands of astronomical observations of unprecedented quality. Tycho’s large-scale observing instruments, together with sophisticated new error correction techniques, increased observational precision by a factor of twenty.

In an appendix to an anatomical work, written for Ferdinand Medici II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Steno recounted his dissection of the head of a shark that recently had washed ashore.

The Academy of the Lynx (Accademia dei Lincei) dissolved after the death of its founder, Prince Federigo Cesi. In its place, Grand Duke Ferdinand II established the Academy of Experiment in Florence, which carried further the research program of Galileo.

From his new astronomy, using Tycho’s observations, Kepler calculated these tables of the positions of the Sun, Moon and planets. Kepler adopted John Napier’s recently invented computational method of logarithms, published in 1614.

Aristotle’s Mechanics contained an analysis of the principles of motion and simple machines. While no longer accepted as an authentic work by Aristotle, its influence among Renaissance scientist-engineers was profound, as illustrated in this commentary by Baldi.

In a work entitled “On the Universe,” Aristotle argued that a 5th element, called ether or the quintessence, composes the celestial spheres that naturally rotate in place above the region where the four lower elements mix together beneath the Moon.

Munster’s Cosmography was one of the most popular books of the 16th century. In addition to the map of the world, it includes separate maps for America, Africa, Asia and Europe. First published in 1540, at least 24 editions were published in the following century.

Della Porta applied the “doctrine of signatures” to humans and animals, exploring how the shape of someone’s head, ears, nose or some other external feature might reveal that person’s true, inner nature by how closely it resembles a particular animal.

Levinus Vincent, a wealthy Dutch merchant with ties to the East Indies, created a spectacular natural history museum in Haarlem. Visiting dignitaries admired his museum, including Peter the Great and King Charles III of Spain.

By far the best known 16th-century defender of Copernicus was Johann Kepler. In this work he demonstrated that vast empty regions lying between the planetary spheres, which were required by Copernicus, were not wasted space.

This travel narrative and encyclopedia presented the most up-to-date information about China based on Jesuit sources and the knowledge of commercial traders.

The astrolabe, one of the fundamental instruments for observational astronomy, consists of three major parts: the mater, the underlying disk; the climate, a removable disk adjusted for latitude; and the rete, a ring marked with star positions.

Aristarchus, the Copernicus of antiquity, proposed in the 3rd century B.C.E. that the Sun lies at the center of the universe and that the Earth and other planets revolve around the Sun.

Although Galileo eloquently championed mathematical methods in science, the main target of his wit and sarcasm in The Assayer was Grassi, a fellow astronomer, whose mathematical methods proved that comets move above the Moon.

Gerard, an estate manager for Queen Elizabeth’s chief executive, was in contact with naturalists around the world who sent him both plants and soil to grow them in. The first illustration of the “Virginia potato” appears in this volume.

The Academy of the Lynx emblem appears prominently on this title page. Although Stelluti once believed that fossils resembling wood originated from buried tree trunks, Cesi persuaded him otherwise.

These notes comprise one of the most important papers in the history of computing. Lovelace explained how Babbage’s “analytical engine,” if constructed, would amount to a programmable computer rather than merely a calculator.

The Academy transformed the thermoscope into the thermometer by adding a graduated scale (which had been done by Galileo and his friends) and by sealing the tube to make it independent of air pressure.

Brongniart and Cuvier showed how fossils were the key to unravelling the order of the strata in the Paris basin. Their fieldwork discoveries and anatomical reconstructions of fossils of large quadrupeds demonstrated the existence of former, pre-human worlds.

In a work entitled “On the Universe,” Aristotle argued that a 5th element, called ether or the quintessence, composes the celestial spheres that naturally rotate in place above the region where the four lower elements mix together beneath the Moon.

Archimedes (d. 212 B.C.) developed the law of the lever with his Treatise on the Balance. He contributed to arithmetic by devising methods for expressing extremely large numbers. He deduced many new geometrical theorems on spheres, cylinders, circles and spirals.

The Rudolpine Tables were not a best seller. Three years later, Kepler and his son-in-law Jacob Bartsch published this little extract to stir up interest in the Rudolphine Tables and boost sales. It contains predictions of the transits of Mercury and Venus across the disk of the Sun in 1631.

Merian, an artist and naturalist, studied the relationships between flowers and insects; she also bred her own insects for this purpose. She was particularly interested in metamorphosis.

Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin, propounded an evolutionary theory in this widely popular didactic poem on plants. In Part 2, “Loves of the Plants,” he inserted a footnote about manzanilla (also known as chamomile).

Apollonius (3rd century B.C.E.) examined the properties of conic sections; namely, the: • circle (cuts a cone horizontally, perpendicularly to the axis of the cone) • ellipse (cuts a cone to make a closed curve) • parabola (cuts a cone parallel to a side of the cone) • hyperbola (cuts a cone in...

In De mundi aetherei (1588), Tycho reported that the comet of 1577 displayed no detectable parallax and thus moved, contrary to Aristotle, in the regions of the heavens beyond the Moon, passing through multiple celestial spheres. The ancient solid spheres melted.

“Many a night I saw the Pleiades rising thro’ the mellow shade, glitter like a swarm of fire-flies Tangled in a silver braid.” “Locksley Hall,” 5th couplet.

Eyewitness to Black Plague: In the opening section, the Florentine writer Boccaccio (1313-1375) recounted his observations of the plague. According to Boccaccio, most people died within about three days of the appearance of tumors.

This book is Orsini’s manual for using a measuring stick instrument which he designed and called a “radio latino.” With its changing angles, multiple sight lines, and various scales, it was useful for making astronomical measurements, surveying uneven topography, measuring a cannon’s bore or...

Danti was a cosmographer in the court of Cosimo I de Medici. Visitors to Florence today may view his stunning maps of the world in the Hall of Maps of the Palazzo Vecchio, as well as armillary spheres and a quadrant he mounted on the facade of the church of Santa Maria Novella.

Prior to Newton, fewer than half a dozen astronomers accepted Kepler’s three laws. Galileo was typical in ignoring everything Kepler did. Yet this beautiful book is an exception: it clearly demonstrated that Kepler’s laws were more accurate than anything that had come before.

Galileo designed this lens grinding machine in 1639, when he was 75 years old. Galileo began grinding his own lenses as early as 1609.

“The night hath been to me a more familiar face than that of man, and in her starry shade of dim and solitary loveliness, I learned the language of another world.” (Manfred, Act 3, Scene 4)

Astronomers use astrolabes for dozens of astronomical operations including telling time by the Sun or stars and determining the positions of planets.

With a telescope, Mayr observed the four satellites of Jupiter, accurately determining their periods of revolution. He named them Europa, Io, Ganymede and Callisto, names which are still used today. In this work Mayr also considered Tycho’s objection to Copernicus based upon star sizes.

To clarify the ability of the barometer to measure the pressure of the atmosphere, Pascal left a barometer at a low elevation in the town of Clermont, in Auvergne, while taking another with him as he climbed the Puy-de-Dôme.

This medieval introduction to astrology was frequently translated from Arabic into Latin. Al-Qabisi lived in the 10th century in Syria.

European techniques of map-making, coupled with Chinese skill and knowledge, led to this two-sheet map by Coronelli. It clearly indicates the Great Wall, Beijing (Xuntien), Korea, and Taiwan. The westernmost part of Japan is also visible.

This sun-centered cosmic section representes the first published defense of Copernicus in England, printed in a work of meteorology.

The physics of bones and muscles: Borelli, a practicing mathematician and engineer as well as a physician, analyzed the musculoskeletal system in terms of the mechanics of the lever and other simple machines. Borelli studied under Galileo’s student Castelli, along with Torricelli.

Schott was among the first to report the “Miracle of Magdeburg,” the sensational story of Otto von Guericke’s public demonstration of the reality of the vacuum. Von Guericke bolted two large hemispheres together, then evacuated the air inside them with his air pump.

Commentaries on Genesis often served as scientific treatises or encyclopedias. Mersenne, a French theologian, astronomer, music theorist and scientific correspondent, addressed a wide range of issues in cosmology in this commentary.

After Clavius, Jesuits tended to adopt Tycho’s system. Biancani’s Sphaera replaced Clavius as the standard introduction to astronomy in many Jesuit colleges. Biancani favored Tycho’s system, which preserved the mathematical elegance of Copernicus and accommodated the absence of stellar parallax...

Milton’s poem, an epic story of the world, recounts the creation and fall, the life of Christ, and the final consummation. Yet in the midst of these history-changing events, Milton found room to mention Galileo’s telescopic discoveries.

In this work, von Guericke explained the design of his air pump and recounted additional experiments conducted with it. He employed the barometer to forecast the weather, and invented an electrostatic generator.

Stensen’s duct, by a founder of geology: Steno, a physician who worked for Ferdinand II de Medici in Florence, is known to generations of geologists as the founder of stratigraphy and an early advocate of the organic origin of fossils.

Stevin’s work represents that of a scientist-engineer in the Low Countries, whose major works appeared in Dutch. Like the scientist-engineers of Italy, Stevin maintained water systems and improved fortifications. He investigated the mechanics of motion, falling bodies and hydraulics.

Rebellion against the limitations of 18th century HMOs: The frontispiece to this work protests the limited medicines available from the official apothecary. The Pharmacopoeia Austriaco-provincialis (Vienna, 1774) mandated the medicines and remedies to be made available.

Boyle, who heard of von Guericke’s experiments via Schott, retained Robert Hooke to construct a similar air pump for him. Boyle’s experiments supported his “corpuscular” view of matter, that air is comprised of particles in motion.

The illustrations in this cosmography show its indebtedness to the Sacrobosco tradition. Barozzi, a humanist scholar who lectured at the University of Padua, provided an updated introduction to observational astronomy, intended as a replacement for Sacrobosco and Peurbach.

This book explains how to use the terrestrial and celestial globes, an armillary sphere (which shows the movements of the sky), and an orrery (which models the motions of the planets). Martin operated an instrument shop in London.

Boscovic, a Jesuit mathematical physicist from the region of modern-day Croatia, published this account of a tornado that passed through Rome in June of 1749. Benjamin Franklin’s reading of this book prompted his own tornado investigations, including storm chasing.

Gilbert, a physician to Queen Elisabeth I, wrote the first experimental treatise devoted to magnetism. Gilbert discerned analogies between the Earth and magnets, and reasoned that the Earth itself is a magnet.

Du Halde lived in China for nearly 30 years. This work recounts the story of Candida Xu, who collaborated with the Jesuit astronomers as had her grandfather, Xu Guangki. For a foldout map of China, du Halde drew upon the Kangxi atlases of 1717 and 1721.

Newton’s contemporaries may have first heard of him through articles in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. There he reported his experiments with prisms on the nature of light and color in the atmosphere.

The body in mechanical philosophy: Descartes applied the mechanical philosophy to every field of natural knowledge, including cosmology, meteorology, the Earth, astronomy and, in this book, the human body.

Dalton defined the law of partial pressures in the course of his meteorological research. Three years later, his New System of Chemical Philosophy (Manchester, 1808) presented his atomic theory and provided a way to calculate the relative weights of elements and compounds.

In Descartes’ cosmology, each star lies at the center of a “vortex,” or gigantic pool of circulating fluid. Stars and vortices are mortal, passing into and out of existence.

Hero described five simple machines: the lever, pulley, wheel, wedge and screw. In this theoretical investigation of the foundations of mechanics, Guidobaldo demonstrated that all five machines could be deduced from the principle of the lever.

The illustration of the heart in this French edition shows a different artistic style than the Latin edition.

As a young scientist-engineer, Galileo wrote two manuscripts on motion. The first, Delle macchine, written ca. 1592; reflected the tradition of Aristotle’s Mechanics. It was never printed. The second, revised study, Le mechaniche, written ca.

This page reflects Wegener’s interest in temperature fluctuations and patterns of glaciation. The theory of continental drift developed from Wegener’s researches in Greenland as a meteorologist with an interest in polar climate.

Conventions of biblical illustration interacted with scientific investigation, each influencing and shaping the other. According to contemporary interpretations of the six days of creation, mountains formed on the 3rd day when the dry land was separated from the sea.

The Copernican idea that the Earth moves as a planet required a thorough revision of physics. Galileo undertook this task in his Discourse on Two New Sciences, published 80 years after Copernicus.

This is the first separate English edition of Galileo’s Discourse on Two New Sciences, his masterwork in mathematical physics. The “two new sciences” are tensile strength and motion.

Algarotti’s popular introduction to Newtonian science went through many editions and aided in the dissemination of Newtonian ideas on the European continent. It was dedicated to Fontenelle. Like Fontenelle’s Plurality of Worlds, it was written as an entertaining dialogue.

Direct observational proof of the motion of the Earth remained difficult to find, even as late as the generation of Isaac Newton.

The Foucault pendulum swings in a constant plane or direction, and thus reveals the rotation of the Earth turning underneath.