Turning the Book Wheel
The lion’s share of the stars of the northern hemisphere. From Johannes Hevelius’ gorgeous Prodromus astronomiae.
The SCEPTICAL CHYMIST: or Chymico - Physical Doubts & Paradoxes, Touching the EXPERIMENTS whereby VULGAR SPAGYRISTS Are wont to Endeavour to Evince their SALT, SULPHUR and MERCURY, to be The True Principles of Things.
You tell ‘em Boyle.
from the first edition of Peter Apianus’ Cosmographicus liber (1524) a volvelle or movable diagram showing a map of the world including America!
Illustrations from the Biodiversity Heritage Library’s book of the week:- Locupletissimi rerum naturalium thesauri accurata descriptio, et iconibus artificiosissimis expressio, per universam physices historiam : Opus, cui, in hoc rerum genere, nullum par exstitit , an 18th century catalog of the natural history collections of the Dutch apothecary Albertus Seba.
De Draconis. From Historiæ animalium liber II : qui est de quadrupedibus ouiparis(1586 edition) Our copy of book two of Gessner’s study of the animals of the world, the oviparous quadrupeds, including dragons. Of course.
From Astronomia Nova Aitiologetos : Seu Physica Coelestis, Tradita Commentariis de Motibvs Stellæ Martis ex Observationibus G. V. Tychonis Brahe (1609)
Kepler’s work on the observations of Mars by Tycho Brahe enabled him to reach the conclusions that planets travel around the Sun in elliptical orbits and that their speed increases as they are nearer the Sun.
This copy, once owned by John, Earl of Bute, was given to the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology by Bern Dibner. In 1955 Bern Dibner, the noted science book collector and founder of the Burndy Library, published Heralds of Science as Represented by Two Hundred Epochal Books and Pamphlets Selected from the Burndy Library. This work by Kepler is one of the two hundred which were selected to illustrate the publication of “proclaimed new truths or hypotheses in science.”
More about the 200 “Heralds of Science”.
At last, the Libraries’ Galileo is up on the Internet Archive! Sidereus nuncius… or the Starry Messenger. Published in 1610, it contains engravings of the moon as observed through a telescope as well as Galileo’s observation of four objects lined up around Jupiter…
To celebrate, this week a few select pages will be tumbl’d. Here, a two page spread with a map of the Pleiades.
In Sidereus Nuncius…, Galileo records his observations of four bright objects arranged in a straight line near the planet Jupiter. As he observed with his telescope over several days, these objects moved, though always staying on the same plane, leading him to conclude that they were in orbit around Jupiter.
