Camille Flammarion, L’Atmosphere: Météorologie Populaire (Paris, 1888), p. 163. Colorized by Susanna J. Magruder. Courtesy History of Science Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries. Download: jpg | tiff

More than a decade ago, in 1996, I prepared a small website telling the story of the above woodcut and tracing its first appearance to Camille Flammarion in 1888. That old website remains available, largely unchanged: “This is not a medieval woodcut.” It explores the image as visual rhetoric, concluding that its enduring appeal lies not so much in the flat Earth myth but as an icon of our common quest of discovery and exploration, the challenge of “boldly going where no one has gone before.”

Many colorized versions of the woodcut appear on that site in low resolution, with permission and according to fair use. However, wouldn’t it be great if there were a colorized version available in higher resolution which educators and anyone could freely use? This is why my daughter, Susanna J. Magruder, created the colorized version of Flammarion’s woodcut shown above, which she is distributing with a CC-by license. Enjoy! You can put it on your website, a t-shirt, a coffee mug, or print out a copy on quality paper for your wall.

I’ve already taken advantage of Susanna’s work by using her version as the icon for my spring 2014 course, “History of Science from Antiquity to the Age of Newton,” which will be available on OU’s Janux digital course platform. It’s already announced there, so take a look (and watch the course overview video, if you’re curious). To me, this woodcut is the ideal icon for the course, and I used it before for the same purpose.

If you’re interested in the longer story of the shape of the Earth, here is a 45-minute video I made some years ago that features the woodcut.

The original black and white illustration by Flammarion is available from our Online Galleries.

Thanks, Susanna!

The range of interests displayed by Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680) is staggering, even in a century renowned for universal scholarship. Despite failed attempts to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics, he was a master of a dozen European and Oriental languages. His forty-odd works include studies of the tower of Babel, ancient Egypt, China, mathematics, music, cosmology, optics, magnetism, and medicine. Both highly praised and an object of ridicule, these works served many seventeenth-century scholars as a ready-reference library on virtually any scientific topic.

A Jesuit at the Collegio Romano, Kircher became curator of the university’s museum which housed natural history objects sent to Rome from missionaries around the world. The lavish illustrations of Kircher’s works made each volume a virtual museum, an iconographic encyclopedia of creation designed to aid the reader’s contemplation and devotion as well as understanding.

Two richly-embellished global sections in the Mundus subterraneus depicted the interlaced systems of air, fire, and water within the Earth. Here’s one of the two:

Executed in an exuberant Baroque style, the dramatic sections manifest Kircher’s global vision in a uniquely memorable way. Yet the sections were not printed at the front of the two folio volumes, nor were they displayed in an unusually prominent position; rather, they are found in the midst of a miscellany of regional marvels known through a combination of classical reports, travel accounts, and Kircher’s own observations during field expeditions to nearby sites in southern Italy. Numerous small-scale sketches throughout Mundus subterraneus illustrate particular surface features and geographical configurations of interest, such as the appearance of hot springs and cold springs in close proximity, or the accounts of the Andes received from missionaries in South America.

Kircher’s global sections are composites of these regional marvels. Both the regional sketches and the global sections suggest the kinds of underground structures one might suppose in order to explain the surface phenomena observed in particular places around the world.

In the Phlegraen Fields (below), Monte Nuovo had formed overnight in 1538, giving vivid demonstration of the power of subterranean fire.

Kircher emphasized investigations on a regional scale, suggesting that every aspect of the geocosm depicted in the sections was manifest in this single specific region of the Earth:

“Having a very earnest desire, a long time, to understand the Miracles of Subterraneous Nature…. I found such a Theater of Nature, displaying herself under wonderful variety of things, as I had with so many desires wished for. [Seeing] what ever thing occurs, in the whole body of the Earth that is wonderfull, rare, unusual, and worthy of Admiration, I found contracted here, as it were, in an Epitomie, by a certain industry of wise and sagacious Nature.”

Kircher included sketches of active volcanos such as Etna, Vesuvius, and Stromboli described on the basis of first-hand observations. During a sea-voyage to Naples in 1638, Kircher witnessed smoke plumes, tidal waves, and the tragic loss of the city of San Eufémia. From the simultaneity of volcanic eruptions, Kircher inferred a network of subterranean communications. A personal account of this experience appears in the “Praefatio” of Mundus subterraneus. Thus, the first double-folio illustration in Mundus subterraneus is not one of the global sections, which are the most dramatic and memorable illustrations, but a huge depiction of Vesuvius included in the same preface:

With Vesuvius still smoldering, Kircher hired a local guide to ascend with him to the top for the sake of first-hand investigation, and dared to have himself lowered into the crater in a harness to take temperature measurements. It is no wonder that Kircher used Vesuvius as his Typus Montis.

Kircher supposed that chambers within the cavernous Earth called geophylacia were created when the dry land was raised above the sea on the third day of creation. Three types of geophylacia imprison air, water, or fire within the Earth; he called these air-houses, water-houses, and fire-houses respectively aerophylacia, hydrophylacia, and pyrophylacia, which are often found in various relations. Another kind of storehouse contains seminal principles responsible for the growth of minerals and earths in passages beneath the ground.

The second global section (below) depicts the subterranean circulation of fire through various fire-houses or pyrophylacia. The Earth is shown as a furnace of activity, pulsing with subterranean drama beneath the surface world of human habitation. Volcanic plumes embroil the borders with a vivid demonstration of the powerful effects of fire. Thick, turbulent smoke overflows the crust of the Earth, which is shown with a greatly exaggerated vertical scale. Fire is “the life of the Macrocosm, as spiritous blood is of the Microcosm.” The largest pyrophylacium at the center of the Earth (A) is hell, in Kircher’s geocentric cosmos the farthest point from heaven and the prison-house of sinners. Purgatory might be a lesser one nearer the surface (B). In the sulfurous environs of the Phlegraen Fields, monks living in a monastery reportedly heard beneath their feet the groans of sufferers in Purgatory. Were pyrophylacia not providentially circumscribed by water, the entire sublunar realm would burn.

The fire-ducts (C) give rise to hot springs and minerals. Volcanos provide air to the geocosmic circulation and, like alchemical spiracles or chimney furnaces, offer an outlet for fumes rising from the fires. The mountains like bones of the Earth provide a secure skeletal structure. Kircher even suggested that the geographical orientation of mountain chains was ordered, in that they tend to run north-south and east-west.

According to Kircher, hydrophylacia lie at the cavernous roots of mountains such as the Alps (below) and the Andes (shown earlier) where they provide the source of springs and rivers.

Many rivers flow in subterranean channels for all or some portion of their course to the sea.

Ocean whirlpools, such as the marvelous Norwegian maelstrom, mark the submarine entrances of passages which siphon water from the sea back to the mountainous hydrophylacia.

Polar views depict the two greatest whirlpools through which water descends into the Earth (note the mountain chains depicted as running east-west in the northern continents). All of these features are represented in the first composite global section shown above, depicting the circulation of water.

Myriad subterranean channels keep the water in constant circulation through the Earth, nourishing the growth of minerals and communicating with surface seas and lakes. Water descends to hydrophylacia near the fiery core, providing needed fuel to sustain the subterranean fires. By means of the pumping of the tides which acts like bellows, water in the channels ascends to reservoirs in high mountains. From these it emerges as rivers and springs and returns to the ocean once again.

Fiery exhalations create the winds that keep the seas in motion. Thus

“Water, Fire; Fire, Water; mutually, as it were, cherish one another; and by a certain unanimous consent, conspire to the Conservation of the Geocosm, or Terrestrial World.”

Prompted by his first-hand observation of volcanic phenomena, interpreted in correlation with travel accounts and literary reports, Kircher’s Theory of the Earth (for so it was regarded by many later writers) was a natural expression of his Jesuit instincts for the integration of new observations within the framework of ancient texts. Kircher’s work shows that Theories of the Earth were not uniformly Cartesian in their cosmology nor simply an outgrowth of the mechanical philosophy. Kircher’s Theory of the Earth was nurtured by his geocentrism because Kircher viewed the Earth as a noble object of study: in defense of Jesuit tradition, the best complement to his enthusiastic tour of the Tychonic heavens in Itinerarivm Exstaticvm was an equally rewarding and more extended sojourn through the subterranean world.

—–

• This essay is excerpted and adapted from: Kerry V. Magruder, “Theories of the Earth from Descartes to Cuvier: Natural Order and Historical Contingency in a Contested Textual Tradition” (University of Oklahoma dissertation, 2000), pp. 527-538.
• These are just a few of the images in Mundus subterraneus; we’ve just scratched the surface. See Kircher’s complete Mundus Subterraneus (1665) in the Online Galleries.

The OU History of Science Collections hold a second Baldi manuscript: his autograph copy of Cronica, a 16th-century history of mathematics, now digitized in its entirety and available from the Collections’ Online Galleries.

Baldi autograph, Cronica (ca. 1596); title page

The Cronica arranges its brief biographical entries as a genealogical account of the restoration of mathematics from Ancient Greece (first entry: Euphorbus) to contemporary Italy (final entry: Guidobaldo del Monte), including an impressive list of Arabic practitioners.  As such it was one of the first histories of mathematics written by a European (though not the first published), and perhaps the first to be written by a European mathematician.  It was an attempt to do for mathematics what Vasari had done for art.

Baldi autograph, Cronica (ca. 1596); Copernicus entry

The manuscript, we learn from internal evidence, was probably completed in 1596:  the final four mathematicians mentioned (Clavius, Aluigi, Magini, Guidobaldo del Monte) all have 1596 as their date. The entry for Guidobaldo mentions some books already printed, others not yet written – this confirms a date of composition between 1580 and 1600.

Baldi autograph, Cronica (ca. 1596); last entry

Here is a bibliographic description:

BALDI, Bernardino. Cronica de Matematici. Overo Epitome del Historia de le Vite Loro. Manuscript, brown ink, 22 lines per page. Folio [28 x 19 cm], (2) ff., 183 pp., (4) ff. 

Bound in 18th century half calf (stained green) and lacquered paper over boards, spine with raised bands and calf title label with tools of the Albani Library, covers slightly abraded. Albani shelfmark 631 on front endleaf. Unidentified private library stamp on leaf following title, a rather blurry cardinals hat with RA at bottom of escutcheon; some worming in blank gutter margin of title and the first few leaves (no loss); some minor toning, but generally a fresh copy, excellent.

We are grateful to Seth Fagen and Prof. Nick Wilding of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies (Columbia University) for the following description of the Cronica and its provenance:

The Cronica and the Vite

The manuscript appears to be the sole witness for the text in Baldi’s own hand, and most likely served as the basis for the printed edition, which like many of Baldi’s works, was only published posthumously (1707). A polymath of remarkable range who left a large corpus of writings, Baldi (1553-1617) was a serious mathematician and translator of mathematical works; he studied in Urbino with Federico Commandino and Guidobaldo del Monte (see previous post).
 
The printer’s motive for publishing the Cronica in 1707 was to prepare an audience for the more detailed – if less inclusive – two volume Vite [Lives] which never followed.  Rediscovered only in 1972, the voluminous Lives has meant that the less detailed Cronica has received little attention.  But as the printer Monticelli points out, rather than being merely an abridgment of the larger project, the Cronica, with 366 biographical entries, is over half again as large as the Vite and represents a different but related project for the construction of a history of mathematics.
 
Both the manuscript and printed version of the Cronica contain Baldi’s own description of the project: 


“For many mathematicians I have found so much written material that I have been able to piece together their Lives; for others who have had less luck I have not been able to gather together enough to let me write them up in full.  As both groups are my concern, I have put together the present Chronicle, in which I briefly touch on the times in which they flourished and the things they wrote…. May the present narrative be read by those who take pleasure in these studies, which, if I am not mistaken, will not be at all displeasing for its novelty.”

Crescimbeni described the work’s genesis in his biographical notice on Baldi, written about 1704, just before the publication of the Cronica:

“After finishing the Vite he noted that even before Thales there were mathematicians, whose lives could not be written due to the loss of sources, but whose names survived and were worth recalling.  Moreover, he thought that the vastness of the Vite he had written might make reading the work a little unwieldly and cumbersome, and lastly that after Clavius others had lived who were worth mentioning, so after a while he was persuaded to make a succinct chronology of these same Professors, starting with Euphorbus instead of Thales, and ending with Guidobaldo de’ Marchesi del Monte…. He certainly intended such a useful and beautiful work for the press, as we see both volumes [of the Vite] along with the Cronica carefully transcribed in his own hand, but, whether distracted by something else, or prevented by death, he left them unprinted.”

That the Cronica was Baldi’s own work, rather than an abridgment by later readers or printers is attested by Marcantonio Vergilii Battiferri who mentioned in his funeral oration for Baldi (1617) a manuscript he called ‘Cronology of dates and brief Eulogies [of all the mathematicians up to our own day].’  Again in 1621, we find the Cronica distinguished from the project of the Vite: in the first manuscript catalogue of Baldi’s own writings, drawn up by Fabrizio Scarloncino and published in his edition of Baldi’s In Mechanica Aristotelis Problemata Exercitationes, the one-volume Epitome is listed separately from the two-volume Lives.

Provenance

The present manuscript of the Cronica was sought out by the members of the Royal Society of London in the 1670s as being of especial interest.  The French astronomer Adrien Auzout (1622 – 1691) almost succeeded in buying the manuscript for the Society’s secretary Henry Oldenburg in 1673, stressing that the version he had seen was ‘the original in the hand of Baldus.’ 
 
It seems that when the work was printed in 1707, it was from the present autograph copy, or one  derived from it: there are occasional additions to the main body of the text (in one case consisting of an entire biographical entry) that correspond precisely to the printed version.  There is one correction in a hand that is not Baldi’s, of Commandino’s mother’s surname; this correction is also found in the printed text.
 
Most of Baldi’s manuscripts were acquired shortly after his death by the Albani Library, founded by Orazio Albani and consolidated by his grandson Gianfrancesco, who became Pope Clement XI in 1700. It is possible that the present manuscript left the Albani collection at the time of its printing and never returned, for while it bears the binding shelfmark (no. 631) of the Albani library, and is cited in Crescimbeni’s early  eighteenth century Life of Baldi as being in Clement’s XI’s library, it did not pass with the other Albani Baldi manuscripts into the Boncompagni collection when that collector purchased them in 1857/8. 
 
The two Boncompagni manuscript catalogs mention a manuscript of the Cronica, and that of 1892 even refers to the Albani shelfmark, but both entries make it clear that they are referring to a copy of this manuscript, probably made in the mid-seventeenth century by Orazio Albani.  Boncompagni’s Baldi collection, including this copy and both the originals as well as copies of the Vite, were bought by Luigi Celli in 1898 and bequeathed by him in 1939 to the Istituto della Carita Antonio Rosmini in Rome, where they were rediscovered independently in 1972 by Bronislaw Biliński and Paul Rose.  Biliński makes it clear that the manuscript of the Cronica now in Rome (ms 68), which corresponds precisely to ms 68 of the 1892 Boncompagni catalogue, is a seventeenth-century copy (Rose is incorrect in claiming that it is the original).  A comparison of these manuscripts would clarify the work’s printing history. The work was later reprinted along with other printed works as Versi e Prose Scelte di Bernardino Baldi (Firenze, Le Monnier, 1859).
 
Just what happened to the autograph manuscript between its printing and the present day is unknown.  As yet unidentified shelfmarks show that it might well have travelled for part of its life alongside the newly discovered Novae Gnomices Libri Quinque, and De Firmamento et aquis opusculum, which were also in the Albani library but did not enter the Boncompagni collection.  Further research is required to establish its later provenance. 

———–

We thank Antonio Becchi, a historian of Bernardino Baldi, for his further comment on the dispersion of the Baldi manuscripts:

Between 1797-1799, part of the Albani collection was requisitioned by
Napoleon’s experts (great experts, they chose the best, very carefully) and was moved to France. Some of these manuscripts (also Baldi’s manuscripts) are now in the Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris) and in the Library of the École de Médecine in Montpellier. Some years later (beginning of the 19th century) another part went to Naples and is now there in the Biblioteca Nazionale. Other manuscripts – probably some of the most interesting ones – were purchased by the German government (advised by Theodor Mommsen) in 1862 and were then sent to Berlin, through Hamburg. Unfortunately the ship carrying the 1,800 manuscripts of the Albani Collection never reached its destination, but sank in the ocean in August 1863. We don’t even have a catalogue of these manuscripts. Other manuscripts were, at beginning of the 18th century, in the library of the lawyer Alessandro Rivani who then donated them to the Colombaria Library (Florence). They were lost in the night between the 3rd
and 4th of August 1944 when the building was set fire by the Germans. Other manuscripts were sold privately from the heirs of the Albani family – it is impossible to know exactly what and when. In 1928 there was the last big sale: 10,000 printed books and several manuscripts of the Albani Collection went to the Catholic University of America (Washington D.C.), where they still are.

————
 
Sources:

• Baldi, Bernardino, Cronica de Matematici overo Epitome dell’Istoria delle Vite Loro (Angelo Antonio Monticelli, Urbino, 1707)
• Baldi, Bernardino, Le Vite de’ Matematici (edizione annotata e commentata della parte medievale e rinascimentale, a cura di Elio Nenci, Francoangeli, Milano, 1998)
• Serrai, Alfredo, Bernardino Baldi – La vita, le opera, (La biblioteca Milano, Edizioni Sylvestre Bonnard, 2002)
• Crescimbeni, Giovan Mario, La vita di Bernardino Baldi Abate di Guastalla (a cura di Ilaria Filograsso, Quattroventi, Urbino, 2001)
• Paul L. Rose, The Italian Renaissance of Mathematics: Studies of Humanists and Mathematicians from Petrarch to Galileo (Geneva, Droz, 1975), esp. 243-79.
• Biliński, Bronislaw, Prolegomena alle Vite dei Matematici di Bernardino Baldi (1587 – 1596) (Wroclaw, 1977)
• Menso Folkerts and Ron B. Thomson, “Boncompagni Manuscripts: Present Shelfmarks,” Beta Version 1.4 (October 2010)

History of Science Collections Online Galleries:

• Bernardino Baldi, Novae Gnomices (ca. 1592)
• Bernardino Baldi, Cronica (ca. 1596)

Antonio Becchi, a Bernardino Baldi historian at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, sent us the following note on receiving news of this acquisition:

As you probably know, almost the entire scientific community still thinks that the manuscript of the Novae gnomonices libri quinque is lost. You have one of the most wanted of Baldi’s writings. In the next weeks and years everyone interested in Baldi and in the Albani Collection will put the Library of the University of Oklahoma on his personal map of the most important libraries in the world. Congratulations! And my colleagues will soon discover that the importance of your Library is not only dependent on this missing jewel.

Here is a description of the manuscript itself:

Novae Gnomonices Libri Quinque (1590-92). Guastalla, 26 April 1592. Manuscript written on paper in ink in a cursive hand, c. 30 lines per page. Small folio [28 x 18.5 cm](183) ff., including c. 250 geometrical diagrams and more finished drawings of instruments.

The first 6 leaves are a self-contained quire on the theory of the sphere tipped-in; it is unclear whether they are integral or not. Bound in 18th-century quarter calf and paper boards stained red, with raised bands on spine gilt with alternating star and honeycomb (?) tools. Spine of binding wormed. Several paste-on cancels, numerous ratures with interlinear or marginal corrections in the same hand. Some minor water staining in gutter of scattered leaves; some inconsequential foxing on a few others. Generally a fresh, unsophisticated copy.

Mordechai Feingold, a distinguished historian of science at the California Institute of Technology, commented on this manuscript after its discovery:

Important unpublished autograph manuscript on dialing, evidently unique and extensively illustrated. A long-lost treatise that provides, for the first time, incontrovertible evidence of Baldi’s considerable mathematical proficiency, hitherto inferred mainly from his Lives of the Mathematicians and commentary on Aristotle’s Mechanica. Rose refers to the present manuscript as one of only two original mathematical works by Baldi — in distinction to his translations or his famous history of mathematics. Writing in 1975, Rose considered both manuscripts “lost” (Italian Renaissance of Mathematics, p. 245 & n. 25). The only reference he gives for the manuscript is its listing in Ireneo Affò’s life of Baldi, where the latter claims to have seen it (Vita di Monsignore Bernardino Baldi da Urbino, primo Abate di Guastalla, nella Vita e nella Opere. Parma, 1783, pp. 196, 203). Rose was an extremely thorough scholar, and his mastery of the literature on 16th-century mathematicians from their own time until the date he published his work was exemplary. Given the absence of any record of the manuscript since Affò, we infer that no one has seen the present manuscript since 1783. Its rediscovery offers an important new document for our knowledge of Italian mathematics and precision instruments during the first third of Galileo’s career.

Baldi acquired his knowledge of mathematics and mechanics during the 1570s through private study in his native town of Urbino with Federico Commandino and, following the latter’s death in 1575, with Guidobaldo del Monte [the History of Science Collections hold important works by both Commandino and Guidobaldo del Monte]. It was probably owing to del Monte’s recommendation that Baldi was appointed in 1580 mathematics tutor to Ferrando Gonzaga, lord of Guastalla, who rewarded Baldi six years later with the abbacy of Guastalla. However, Baldi’s determination to assert the ecclesiastical rights of the abbey embroiled him in bitter controversy with the magistrate and inhabitants of Guastalla — at one point Baldi even excommunicated the entire town! —thereby souring Baldi’s relations with Gonzaga himself. He ultimately resigned in 1592.

Against such a volatile backdrop the composition of the Novae Gnomonices took place. Baldi may have been a reluctant cleric. He took holy orders only shortly before he was made an abbot in 1586, and it appears that his scholarly temper was somewhat at odds with a priestly station. Be this as it may, the half decade preceding his resignation was perhaps the most productive of his career, in no small part owing to his determined effort to attract new patrons via his writings. In addition to composing a considerable number of the mathematicians’ Lives, Baldi published in 1589 an Italian translation of Hero of Alexandria’s Automata, which he dedicated to the Venetian Jacomo Contarini — a renowned devotee of practical and theoretical mathematics — in a bid for patronage and support.

The following year Baldi gathered together his more literary efforts and published them as Versi e Prose. The Gnomonices came next. As was his custom, Baldi dated each of the five books upon completion, allowing us to follow his progress: Book I is dated 20 January 1590; Book II was ready on 2 February; Book III on 22 February; and Book IV on 5 October. The fifth book took longer and was completed on 26 April 1592.

The manuscript is dedicated to Francesco Maria della Rovere II, Duke of Urbino (1548-1631), who in 1626 would consign the duchy he had governed for half a century to Pope Urban VIII. Also a student of Commandino, Francesco Maria developed a strong passion for the mathematical sciences, and to practical mathematics in particular, becoming one of the most important patrons of Italian science in the second half of the sixteenth century. Among the books dedicated to him were Commandino’s celebrated translation of Euclid’s Elementorum libri XV (1572), Francisco Maurolico’s Opuscula mathematica (1575), and Guidobaldo del Monte’s Liber mechanicorum (1577). Later, he befriended Galileo. Such interests, along with the mutual ties to Urbino and to Commandino, made the duke a natural recipient of Baldi’s treatise. The gambit paid off, if not immediately. By 1601 Baldi had become historiographer to the duke, a position he held until his death.

The manuscript throws considerable light on Baldi’s mathematical prowess. By 1590 the post-medieval tradition of treatises on dialing was six decades old. Initiated in Germany with Sebastian Münster’s predominantly practical manual Composito Horologiorum (1531) — devoid of any mathematical proofs for the constructions — it gathered strength with the far more considerable Gnomonice of Andreas Schöner (1562). In Italy, the lead was taken by Giovanni Battista Vimercato, whose Dialogo della Descrittione Teorica et Pratica de gli Horologi Solari enjoyed at least nine editions between 1557-1587. Commandino himself enriched the genre with his 1562 edition of a medieval Latin translation of Ptolemy’s Analemma, to which he appended his own Liber de Horologiorum descriptione. Twelve years later, Giovan Battista Benedetti published the far more technical De Gnomonum umbrarumq[ue] solarium usu liber, which attempted to offer a universal method for dialing. Finally, in 1581 there appeared the ultimate word on the subject, Christoph Clavius’s mammoth folio volume Gnomonices libri octo, which offered a comprehensive survey of the construction and use of virtually every known dial, complete with mathematical demonstrations [OU Clavius holdings].

Baldi acknowledged Clavius in his dedication, and aimed to offer a more intelligible — not comprehensive — treatment of the subject. Also flaunted in the dedication was the same purposefulness that had animated much of the scientific work of Commandino and Baldi himself, namely the restitution of the mathematical sciences to their previous glory, and in this case with the science of dialing. The text itself includes a systematic treatment of the theory and practice of dialing, from the determination of meridian lines to the principles of projection onto any plane. Baldi’s treatise provides ample testimony of his full mastery of the principles of construction and demonstration of most sundials. He treats both altitude and direction dials, explicating the mathematical principles underlying construction on flat and curved surfaces, and parades the design (in Book V) of fine equinoctial and universal dials. Baldi exhibits good command of conic sections as well as graphic projection, and the numerous expertly drawn diagrams that accompany the text substantiate contemporary accounts that it was he who supplied the diagrams for all of Commandino’s later works.

Only a detailed study of the Novae Gnomonices, including a close comparison with Clavius’ Gnomonices, will establish the precise contribution of Baldi to dialing. What cannot be doubted is that the manuscript is a significant mathematical treatise by one of the more distinguished practitioners of Italian renaissance mathematics.

 
Sources:

• Paul L. Rose, The Italian Renaissance of Mathematics: Studies of Humanists and Mathematicians from Petrarch to Galileo (Geneva, 1975), esp. 243-79;
• A. J. Turner, “Dialing in the Time of Giovan Battista Benedetti,” in Cultura, scienza e tecniche nella Venezia del cinquecento. Atti del convegno internazionale di studio Giovan Battista Benedetti e il suo tempo (Venice, 1987), 311-20;
• A. J. Turner, “Sun-dials: History and Classifications,” History of Science 27 (1989), 303-18 (both reprinted in A. J. Turner, On Time and Measurement: Studies in the History of Horology and Fine Technology (Aldershot,1993).
• John L. Heilbron, The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories (Harvard University Press, 2001).

View the entire manuscript: Bernardino Baldi, Novae Gnomonices, in the Collections’ Online Galleries.

Cassini was professor of astronomy at the University of Bologna until becoming the founding director of the Paris Observatory in 1671. In addition to his discoveries about Mars, Cassini is well-known for his observations of Saturn, including the discovery of four of Saturn’s moons and of the largest division between its rings, which now bears his name. In 1672 he devised a way to measure the distance between Mars and Earth, thereby allowing a better estimate of the solar system’s dimensions.

These broadsides are of great interest not only for their content but more generally for what they represent about the practice of astronomy in Italy in the generation after Galileo: all three are brief reports separately issued in quick succession in order to stake out what would nowadays be called an intellectual property claim. 

Among other details, they expressly identify the telescopes used and their maker; most notably, the 17-foot long telescope crafted by Giuseppe Campani. Also scrupulously credited are the correspondents who provided information and even a list of ten witnesses who could in principle verify the observations, including Geminiano Montanari.

Altogether, these documents provide highly interesting and little known documentation for how scientific results were disseminated. It is no accident that the present titles appeared just a year after the founding of the first two scientific journals in Europe: the Journal des Savans and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, in January and March of 1665 respectively. The present pamphlets share a version of experimental methodology like that championed by these journals: precise recording of observational data, especially by means of illustration and tables; description of the means and conditions by and under which the data was obtained; crediting other researches with corroborative data when appropriate; and naming a list of witnesses who could attest to the author’s observations if challenged.

In the first document, Martis circa axem proprium revolubilis observationes Bononiae (below), Cassini provided a page-long description of his observations of the dark areas of Mars, taken over a series of days in February, March, and April of 1666. The planet’s different phases, illustrated on the facing page (above), allowed Cassini to deduce that Mars rotated on its own axis, as well as to detect the planet’s large, Earth-like inclination to the ecliptic.

In the second document, De aliis Romanis observationibus macularum Martis (below), Cassini discussed other interpretations of Mars’ markings. Referring back to both the text and diagrams of the previous document, he responded to the contentions of Francesco and Salvatore Serra that Mars’ rotational period was approximately 13 hours. By Cassini’s calculation, on the other hand, it was 24 hours 40 minutes — just 3 minutes off the modern value for Mars’ sidereal rotation.

Mars’ rotational period is the focus of the third document, De Periodo quotidianæ revolutionis Martis (below), in which Cassini offered a more detailed explanation of his data.

All three pamphlets were published by the same Bologna publisher in the same year. While issued separately, they form a consecutive series. The present set conforms to the Instituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico delle Biblioteche Italiane collation of 6 leaves, of which the verso of the 4th leaf is blank and the 6th leaf is an integral blank.

CASSINI, Giovanni/Gian Domenico. Martis Circa Axem Proprium Revolubilis Observationes Bononiae. Bologna, HH de Ducius, 1666. Large 4to. [26.5 x 19.5 cm], (2) ff., including a full-page engraving.
__________. De aliis Romanis observationibus macularum Martis. Bologna, HH de Ducius, 1666. Small folio [30.5 x 21 cm], (2) ff., including 1 full-page engraving.
__________. De Periodo quotidianæ revolutionis Martis. Bologna, HH de Ducius, 1666. Small folio [30.5 x 21 cm], (2) ff., the second blank and integral. Disbound. Some staining but plates clean.
View catalog record.

Of the greatest rarity, we have located only 10 other copies: 2 in Florence, 4 in Paris, and 1 each in Bologna, Munich, Zurich and London (none in America).

View the entire work in the Online Galleries.

With our thanks to Seth Fagan and Nick Dew (McGill University) for their assistance with this description.

The metadata-enhanced images are organized for browsing in parallel directories according to (1) period, (2) author and (3) date of publication, as explained here:
http://ouhos.org/2010/06/03/how-to-browse-the-image-galleries/

We will digitize entire books when requested by a collaborating project, when distinctive characteristics of the OU copy of a work warrant its digitization, or when the work contains a large number of detailed plates that make existing low-quality versions insufficient. The galleries include over 130 books digitized in their entirety, listed here:
http://ouhos.org/2010/06/19/digitized-books/
Examples of digitized books include Regiomontanus, Kalendarium (1476); Vesalius, De fabrica (1543); Agricola, De re metallica (1556); Aldrovandi’s Monstrorum historia (1570); Gerard’s Herball (1597); Hooke’s Micrographia (1665); the celestial atlases of Bayer (1661) and Bode (1801); William Smith’s geological map of England and Wales (1815); and Darwin’s Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle, vol. 1, vol. 2, and vol. 3 (1838-43).

The non-copyrighted images are offered with generous terms of use, although attribution is required:
http://ouhos.org/2010/06/03/images-terms-of-use/

To add interest to browsing the galleries, there are several rotating content galleries:

• Featured Books: a rotating selection of digitized books (cf. complete list).
• Featured Manuscripts: images from a rotating selection of Collections’ handwritten manuscripts, currently including a Samurai manual and “Memoirs of Niels Bohr” by Jens Rud Nielsen.
• Featured Pages: by various authors in a number of subjects.

We hope these rotating galleries will put some of the most interesting new digitized items at your fingertips and make it more convenient for you to discover colorful and exciting new images.

For more information, see the History of Science Collections blog:
http://ouhos.org/

OU participates in a consortium of collaborating institutions for digital projects in the history of science, and has contributed books to some of these projects. For more information, click the Digital Projects category in the right margin of this blog.

This is the 5th post in a series celebrating the centennial of the Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy.

One unlikely work of Einstein is a Yiddish translation of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, published in 1921. This little book is pertinent to recent discussions by historians of 20th-century physics about the nature of “Jewish physics” in the Third Reich, the relations between proponents of Yiddish and Zionism, and the role of Einstein as a leader of East European Jewry in the years before and after World War II. For example, in a recent article, Roland Gruschka explores the implications of a 1927 Yiddish translation of Einstein (“Tuvia Shalit’s Di spetsyele relativitets-teorye of 1927 and Other Introductions to the Theory of Relativity in Yiddish,” Science in Context, vol. 20, 2007, pp. 317-339).

This earlier, 1921 edition is a translation of Albert Einstein, Uber die spezielle und allgemeine Relativitatstheorie (Gemeinverstandlisch), Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1917. Scholars may view this work in the Collections or in the Online Galleries.

This Yiddish edition of Einstein illustrates why we collect not only first editions, but also subsequent editions and translations that enable scholars to track the changes in scientific texts over time and to explore the translation of ideas into new cultural contexts. For the same reasons, the Collections also hold a Yiddish translation of Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, published in New York in 1926.

This is the 3rd post in a series celebrating the centennial of the Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Jens Rud Nielsen (1894-1979), a student of Niels Bohr, penned this manuscript held by the History of Science Collections entitled Memories of Niels Bohr. The original manuscript is available in its entirety in the History of Science Collections Online Galleries.

Nielsen published an article with the same title in Physics Today, 1963, vol. 16, pp. 22-30. The manuscript and published article are quite different.

This is the 2nd post in a series celebrating the centennial of the Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Jens Rud Nielsen (1894-1979), who joined the OU Physics Department in 1924, was an undergraduate student of Niels Bohr in Denmark. Bohr, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, made two trips to the University of Oklahoma, first in 1937 and again in 1957.

The text of Bohr’s 1957 lecture at the University of OKlahoma was recorded by Physics Professor Chun Lin and then transcribed by Nielsen. Lin’s original reel-to-reel tape is in the OU History of Science Collections.

Robin Noad, Director of the Media Resource Center of the Weitzenhoffer Family College of Fine Arts, recently digitized the original reel-to-reel tape, which enables us to make it available online. Use the following links to download the lecture in the audio format of your choice:

1. mp3 (compressed file, lowest quality, volume not adjusted; 109 MB).
2. m4v (high quality, recommended version, optimized for iTunes, volume adjusted; 116 MB).
3. wav (lossless format, largest file size, volume not adjusted; 238 MB).

In the recording, Bohr begins at 6 min, 45 sec. He is preceded by an introduction delivered by Jens Rud Nielsen.

Note: Bohr’s speaking voice becomes quieter over the course of the lecture. To partially compensate for this, the m4v audio file progressively increases the volume as the talk proceeds, by a difference of up to 5.8 dB toward the end. The other two files convey the talk as recorded, without adjustments.

The Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy has made Nielsen’s transcription available online, prepared by Tom Miller, emeritus professor of Physics at OU.

Bohr’s lecture was published as a booklet (cover shown below) by the Frontiers of Science Foundation of Oklahoma, Inc.. The Foundation has generously granted us permission to distribute a scanned version online (download pdf here, 2.8 MB).

When Darwin returned, he enlisted leading naturalists of the day to describe the specimens. The Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle was published as a collaborative effort between 1838 and 1843. Contributors included Richard Owen (fossil mammals), George Waterhouse (mammals), John Gould (birds), Leonard Jenyns (fish) and Thomas Bell (reptiles).

The quarto work of 632 total pages includes 166 plates, 82 of which were hand colored. Gould’s illustrations of birds are renowned (he also recognized that Darwin’s finches represented more than one species). Darwin superintended the production of the work, including the plates, and contributed introductions, notes and descriptive comments throughout. Aspects of habitat that appear in the illustrations, such as background depictions of associated plants and insects, reflect Darwin’s close collaboration with his senior contributors. This work introduced Darwin to the British scene, after the Beagle voyage, as an important and upcoming young naturalist.

The Zoology of the Beagle was originally published in 5 Parts, consisting of a total of 19 Numbers issued over a six-year period:

1. Fossil Mammalia (4 Numbers: F8.1, F8.7, F8.8, F8.13)
2. Mammalia (4 Numbers: F8.2, F8.4, F8.5, F8.10)
3. Birds (5 Numbers: F8.3, F8.6, F8.9, F8.11, F8.15)
4. Fish (4 Numbers: F8.12, F8.14, F8.16, F8.17)
5. Reptiles (2 Numbers: F8.18, F8.19)

Darwin editions are designated according to Freeman number based upon the bibliographic work of Richard B. Freeman. This work as a whole is designated F8. Each individual Number of the work is designated by a decimal “.#” from F8.1 through F8.19.

The OU copy is bound in three volumes:

1. Fossil and living mammals (Parts 1 and 2)
2. Birds (Part 3)
3. Fish and Reptiles (Parts 4 and 5)

The OU copy of Darwin’s first and rarest work is exceptional, with minimal foxing, no missing plates, and all errata sheets present. This recent acquisition completed the OU collection of Darwin first editions. These volumes are available in their entirety on the Collections’ image galleries.

In 1616 Galileo was silenced on Copernicanism, but he bounced back with gusto in 1623. In that year his supporter and friend, Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, a former patron of the Academy of the Lynx and uncle of Cardinal Francesco Barberini , became Pope Urban VIII. The election of Barberini seemed to assure Galileo of support at the highest level in the Church. A visit to Rome confirmed this.

The Apiarium (Rome, 1625) was a gift of the Lynx to the new pope. Galileo adapted the telescope into a new instrument, named a microscope by a member of the Lynx. In the Apiarium, the first publication of observations made with a microscope, Federico Cesi (1585-1630) and Francesco Stelluti (1577-1651) studied the anatomy of the bee.

Only a few copies of this broadsheet were printed. See how the type bit deeply into the hand-made cotton paper? (below).

Along the top of this extremely rare document are representations of ancient coins depicting bees (below). Note the Barberini crest. The classical age of microscopy thus began with diplomacy.

The text includes classical references to bees as well as new knowledge, integrated in a tabular outline (below). Cesi had a fondness for tabular layouts, even in classification.

In a work of the same time, Stelluti published drawings. On the title page (below, left), note the Barberini bees, and the name of their patron, Francesco Barberini. And the Lynx. A remarkable plate displays the fine anatomical structures of bees, arranged in the pattern of the Barberini crest (below, right; click thumbnails for larger versions).

Just as Galileo’s telescope brought near the Moon and stars, so the eyes of the Lynx could see the secrets of the small, portraying structures of the bee never seen before.

An early alumna of the OU History of Science program, Clara Sue Kidwell (right, and below left) translated the Apiarium as part of her PhD dissertation in 1970. The translation appears as an appendix to a larger study of the Academy of the Lynx. Kidwell explains that Curator Duane Roller used to keep the temperature so low in the Collections’ former location on the 3rd floor in order to prevent the old graduate students from spoiling!

Prof. Kidwell later served as Director of the Native American Studies program at OU (1995-2006) and as Director of the American Indian Center at the University of North Carolina (2006-present).

• Apiarium gallery
• Apiarium catalog record
• Kidwell translation (dissertation appendix; searchable pdf, 40MB)
• Kidwell dissertation (via catalog)
• Freedberg, Eye of the Lynx
• Galileo’s Microscope at the Galileo Museum, Florence
• List of digitized books

Over 130 books are digitized entirely (or nearly so) on the Online Galleries website of the History of Science Collections of the University of Oklahoma Libraries. The Galleries provide over 60,000 high-resolution color images suitable for close scrutiny. The importance of the galleries lies not in how many complete books are digitized. Rather, browse these galleries when you need engravings, portraits, maps and illustrations for scholarly examination, or iconic images of pedagogical value for your teaching and presentations.

Nevertheless, we will digitize entire books when it serves one of the following purposes:

1. A significant work is requested by University of Oklahoma scholars and teachers to support their research and instruction, or by collaborating digital projects, particularly if the work is not available elsewhere on the web. Examples include the first English translation of William Harvey (1653); the Salusbury English translation of Galileo (1661); the Clarke/Leibniz correspondence (1717) and Cesi’s Apiarium (1625; with an English translation by Clara Sue Kidwell).
2. Distinctive characteristics of the OU copy of a work warrant its digitization regardless of duplication. Examples include the marginalia from various hands found in Aristotle’s biological works (1476); Galileo’s presentation copy of the Sidereus nuncius (1610) or the extensively annotated copy of Copernicus, De revolutionibus (1543) from the Offusius circle of mid-16th-century Paris astronomers.
3. The work contains a large number of detailed plates that make existing low-quality versions insufficient. This is the most common rationale. Examples include Regiomontanus, Kalendarium (1476); Vesalius, De fabrica (1543); Agricola, De re metallica (1556); Aldrovandi’s Monstrorum historia (1570); Gerard’s Herball (1597); Hooke’s Micrographia (1665); the celestial atlases of Bayer (1661) and Bode (1801); William Smith’s geological map of England and Wales (1815); and Darwin’s Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle, vol. 1, vol. 2, and vol. 3 (1838-43).

The list of digitized books below is arranged alphabetically by author last-names. Titles are linked to the image galleries. Author names are linked to Wikipedia (why we do this). Manuscripts and incunabula (works printed up to 1500) are in bold.

Darwin: More than 60 works by Charles Darwin have been digitized but are not listed below. See the Darwin galleries for complete digitized versions of all Darwin first editions (listed by title here), and about 40 hard-to-find other editions, which we have provided to the Darwin Online project of Cambridge University. Darwin editions digitized for Cambridge are most conveniently accessed from the OU list at Darwin Online).

1. Agricola, De re metallica (Basel, 1556)
2. Aldrovandi, Monstrorum historia (Bononiae, 1570)
3. Apian, Cosmographia (Antwerp, 1545)
4. Aristarchos, De magnitudinibus, et distantiis soli, et lunae (Pisavri, 1572)
5. Aristotle, De animalibus (Venice, 1476)
6. Aspin, Urania’s Mirror, or a View of the Heavens (London, 1825)
7. Bernardino Baldi (1533-1617), Novae gnomonices, libri quinque (1592). Latin. View catalog record. View entire ms online. More info.
8. Bernardino Baldi (1533-1617), Cronica de Matematici (ca. 1596). Latin. View images. Uncataloged. View entire ms online. More info.
9. Baroillet, Rapport du Comité des Fortifications, sur une méthode d’écrire en chiffres et sur l’instrument approprié à cet objet, proposés par le citen Baroillet, [France, c. 1790]. Manuscript. (More info.)
10. Bartisch, Ophthalmodouleia (Dresden, 1583). More info.
11. Bayer, Explicatio characterum aeneis (Ulm, 1697)
12. Bayer, Uranometria (Ulm, 1661)
13. Bode, Uranographia sive astrorum descriptio (Verolini, 1801)
14. Burnet, The Theory of the Earth (London, 1684)
15. Cassini, Giovanni Domenico (Jean-Dominique), Martis Circa Axem Proprium Revolubilis Observationes Bononiae (1666). More info.
16. Cesi, Apiarium (Rome, 1625). (More info.)
    • English translation by Clara Sue Kidwell (pdf).
17. Chatelet, Dissertation sur la nature et la propagation du feu (Paris, 1744)
18. Clarke, A Collection of papers, which passed between the late learned Mr. Leibnitz and Dr. Clarke (London, 1717), letters 1-3.
19. Clavius, In Sphaeram Ioannis de Sacro Bosco commentarivs (Romae, 1570)
20. Copernicus, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (Norimbergae, 1543). Extensive annotations from the mid-16th century circle of Paris astronomers led by Offusius. Contains censures of 1616.
21. Charles Darwin: see note above.
22. Finley, John, Tornadoes (New York, 1887)
23. Fontenelle, A Week’s Conversation on the Plurality of Worlds (London, 1728)
24. Fuchs, De historia stirpium (Basel, 1542). Hand-colored.
25. Galileo, Sidereus nuncius (Venice, 1610)
    • English translation by Peter Barker (pdf)
26. Galileo, Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems (Salusbury translation, 1661)
27. Galileo, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (Salusbury translation, 1661)
28. Gerard, The Herball: or Generall Historie of Plantes (London, 1597). Hand-colored.
29. Gesner, De rerum fossilium (Tigvri, 1565)
30. Harvey, The Anatomical exercises of Dr. William Harvey (London, 1653)
31. Hokusai, Katsushika Iitsu iboku Hoksai manga (19th century, woodblock print book, Japanese).
32. Hooke, Micrographia (London, 1665)
33. Huygens, Systema Saturnium (Hag-Comitis, 1659)
34. Isidore, Saint, Opusculum de temporibus (Rome, 1473)
35. Jabir Ibn Hayyam (Geber), In hoc volumine de alchemia (Nuremberg, 1541)
36. Jenner, An Inquiry Into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae (London, 1798)
37. Johnson, Samuel, Dictionary of the English Language, vol. 1 (London, 1755) and vol. 2 (London, 1758); Wikipedia book article.
38. Kepler, Mysterium cosmographicum (Tubingen, 1596)
39. Kepler, Strena, seu, de nive sexangula (Frankfurt on Main, 1611)
40. Kepler, on the Bible and Copernicanism (Salusbury translation, 1661)
41. Kircher, Athanasius. Mundus subterreneus (Amsterdam, 1665).
42. Ernst Krause, Erasmus Darwin. Translated from the German by W.S. Dallas. With a Preliminary Notice by Charles Darwin. London, John Murray, 1879.
43. Merian, Erucarum ortus (Amsterdam, 1717)
44. Mondino Dei Luzzi, Anothomia (Venice, 1507)
45. Jens Rud Nielsen, Memories of Niels Bohr (undated manuscript; more information).
46. (Ise?) Nobutoyo, Yahon Hiden. Japanese book about the arrow; 1846 manuscript copy by Hajime Terai from 1556 original written by Nobutoyo, illustrations copied by Odani. (1556-1846a)
47. (Ise?) Nobutoyo, Koto no sho. Japanese book about “leggings” (cowboy chaps); 1846 manuscript copy by Hajime Terai from 1556 original written by Nobutoyo, illustrations copied by Odani. (1556-1846b)
48. Pacioli, Divina proportione (Venice, 1509)
49. Peale, Rembrandt, An Historical Disquisition on the Mammoth, or Great American Incognitum, an Extinct, Immense, Carnivorous Animal, whose Fossil Remains have been found in North America (London, 1803).
50. Pritto, Diego, Il Corriere Astronomo (Bologna, 1650)
51. Regiomantanus, Kalendarium (Venice, 1476)
52. Erasmus Reinhold, Demonstratio halonis. Manuscript, ca. 1550.
53. Sacrobosco, Sphaera Ioannis de Sacrobosco emendata (Antwerp, 1582)
54. Sacrobosco, Opus Sphaericum (Venice, 1478)
55. Saulnier, Notice sur le voyage de M. Lelorrain, en Egypte (Paris, 1822), with zodiac plate by Vivant Denon. (More info.)
56. Smith, William, A Memoir to the Map and Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales (London, 1815)
57. Smith, William, Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales (London, 1815). See also the composite double-page maps.
58. Toaldo, Giuseppe, Saggio meteorologico (Padua, 1770)
59. Tyson, Edward, The Anatomy of a Pygmy (London, 1751)
60. Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica (Basel, 1543)
61. Vitruvius Pollio, Architecture, vol. 1 (London, 1791
62. Wilkins, John, A Discovery of a New World, or, A Discourse Tending to prove, that ’tis Probable there may be another habitable World in the Moon (London, 1684).
63. Wright, Thomas, The Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe (London, 1750)
64. New England Primer (Boston, 1745), wikipedia

Last revised: March 31, 2011.

To see if an image is available for downloading, go to the main page of the Online Galleries: http://hos.ou.edu/galleries/. You can then browse image thumbnails by period, author and date. Click any thumbnail to view an image in a larger format.

The image server contains the following different resolutions of each image:

• Thumbnails;
• Small jpgs that load quickly in a web browser;
• Medium jpgs that show more detail when previewed in a web browser or displayed in a presentation;
• Full size tiff images suitable for printing. These high resolution images are too large to preview in a web browser or to use in a presentation.

Let’s suppose you are looking for an image of the title page of Astronomia nova (1609) by Johann Kepler.

The first thing to know is that images are sorted according to:
Period / AuthorName / Publication Year / FileName.

(click image to enlarge)

1. Period: All of the works of an author are grouped according to the century of the first major publication. Kepler’s first major publication was Mysterium cosmographicum (1596); therefore images from all of Kepler’s books are found under the 16thCentury. Similarly, modern editions of Euclid’s Geometry are found under Ancient science. And Regiomontanus’ 1496 epitome of Ptolemy’s Almagest is found under Late Ancient science, for Ptolemy, rather than in the 15th century. Sounds tricky, but this is the best scheme we can come up with in order to avoid assigning later editions to duplicate folders in multiple periods.
2. AuthorName: Among the 16thCentury links there is a link for Kepler.
3. PublicationYear: Among the Kepler links you will find links for each of his books, named according to the year of publication. Other links may exist for portraits from our collection of 600 portraits, or for travel slides, exhibits, maps or other kinds of related items. Click these links to browse thumbnail images. Click any thumbnail to view a larger version.
4. FileNames: File names typically include the author’s name, the year of publication, the volume number and page number, and a suffix indicating format (.jpeg, .tiff, .mov, .pdf). Abbreviations used within file names include:
   • fp (frontispiece)
   • tp (title page)
   • c (colophon)
   • bk (the book as a whole)
   • f (figure or plate)
   • v (volume)
   • Three zeros are usually inserted before front matter, such as fp and tp images, to help them sort at the top, before other pages.
   • Three z’s are inserted before end matter, such as indices or endpapers, to make them sort at the end of a gallery.

   Therefore, the file named Kepler-1609-000-tp.jpg should be what we’re looking for. After previewing the image in a small or medium jpg format, you can download the corresponding high resolution, full size tiff version, Kepler-1609-000-tp.tif.

The image server is not well indexed by Google. However, to search with Google, go to Google images, choose advanced image search, and put hos.ou.edu in the Domain field. Don’t put the entire url in the Domain field, and don’t include a final slash. Just hos.cas.ou.edu. We plan to increase searchability in the future.

See also: About the Online Galleries

Bad links? Questions? Please contact the History of Science Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries, 401 W. Brooks, Rm 521, Norman, OK 73019-0528, 405/325-2741, [email protected].

Consistent with our role as a special collection of rare books in a major public university committed to a teaching and research mission, the History of Science Collections of the University of Oklahoma Libraries (“HOS”) is pleased to grant permission for non-exclusive, global, media neutral use of our digitized images of public domain images without charge, for non-commercial personal, research, and study purposes only. Permission to use images is not an authorization to publish. By using the images, User agrees to the following conditions:

• Let us know of the use of any image(s) in any print or electronic media.
• If an image is intended for use in a print or electronic publication, User agrees to secure the HOS’s permission in advance (contact the Curator, [email protected]), and recognizes that permission to publish does not constitute a waiver of any intellectual property rights that HOS may have in the objects or images. Generally, no more than 5 pages or 5% (whichever comes first) of any book or manuscript may be reproduced by facsimile or transcription, in any print or online publication.
• If permission is granted, User will include the following attribution statement: “Image(s) courtesy History of Science Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries.” Please note the exact phrasing of our name as “Collections,” plural, not “Collection”; and “Oklahoma Libraries,” not simply OU.
• If permission is granted, User agrees to send a complimentary copy of the published work (printed work or ebook or other electronic media) to: History of Science Collections, University of Oklahoma, 401 W. Brooks, Rm. 521, Norman, OK 73019-0528 (small, drm-free e-book files may be emailed to the Curator, [email protected]).

Nothing shall be construed as granting authorized users or any third party any interest in or to the images or the content they contain. All rights in and to the images and content that are not in the public domain are expressly reserved by HOS.

See also: About the Online Galleries

There is no fee to download or use these images, and our terms of use are quite generous — mainly, attribute them to us with a statement such as “Courtesy History of Science Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries.”

As a post from July 31, 2006, explained:

At the end of summer, 2006, approximately 6,000 images from books held in the History of Science Collections of the University of Oklahoma Libraries were available on the History of Science Collections image server. Our generous terms of use reflect our mission, as a public research university, in providing resources for teaching, research and publication.

Available images represent a wide variety of rare works in the history of science, including Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Aristarchos, Archimedes, Hippocrates, Hyginus, Pliny, Ptolemy, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), Crescenzi, Duns Scotus, Hildegard of Bingen, Sacrobosco, Leonardo da Vinci, Peurbach, and Regiomontanus, in addition to hundreds of images from 16th century and later works by Copernicus, Vesalius, Kepler, Galileo, Boyle, Newton, Cuvier, Darwin, Finley, Flammarion or Curie, to name a few.

Since that time the number of available images has grown to over 60,000. The importance of the galleries lies not in how many complete books are digitized. Rather, these galleries provide high-resolution color images suitable for close scrutiny. Browse these galleries when you need engravings, portraits, maps and illustrations for scholarly examination, or iconic images of pedagogical value for your teaching and presentations.

Above: Charles Darwin, Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle, (London, 1838-43).

See also: About the Online Galleries

The header for the blog is taken from a 1535 work by Albrecht Dürer held in the Collections. The transformation of a three-dimensional object onto a two-dimensional canvas by means of perspective drawing, depicted by Dürer, suggests our aim to transform the three-dimensional space of the History of Science Collections onto the ethereal “canvas” of this blog.

View additional Dürer images at the Collections’ image galleries.