Recreational Microscopy

A century after Robert Hooke's extraordinary treatise introduced the microscopic world to an astonished public, the German polymath, physician and keeper of the Margrave of Brandenburg's natural history collection, Martin Frobenius Ledermüller (1719-1769), succeeded in elaborating the potential of this emerging scientific art of popular microscopy.

Ledermüller produced a series of books in the second half of the eighteenth century whose success was directly related to the visual quality of the engravings made from his own drawings. Illustrations of previously invisible material - fungi, plants, insects, plankton and crystals - were a great commercial draw card in their own right of course. But Ledermüller augmented the basic findings he recorded from his microscopic studies with a graphic designer's aesthetic.

Specimens are arranged in the pictures to achieve an overall symmetry or balanced appearance, the details are unnaturally precise and handcolouring enhances the artistic effects. These attractive plates may not win any art show prizes necessarily and the scientific content may not represent ground breaking research per se, but Ledermüller (and similar early microscopists) occupies a nonetheless important place in the history of science. These embellished visual works - still informative and based in fact - served as a means by which the esoteric world of science could be communicated to a fascinated lay audience. If enthusiastic dilettantes failed to successfully visualise similar quality details after dashing out to purchase their own microscope, well, it could only be a matter of practice and modifying their techniques right?


Within the last two days, the formidable Strasbourg Universities Digital Library uploaded a three volume work by Ledermüller. The selection of images above is from the first two volumes (I've only just now discovered that the third is also on line). About a quarter(?) of the available plates from the first two volumes are shown. I think there are one hundred and fifty plates in total in the series. The only adjustments I made were cropping and a slight reduction in size (the large versions posted to flickr are still huge).

'Amusement Microscopique tant pour l'Esprit, que pour les Yeux; Contenant Cinquante Estampes [..] Dessinées d'après Nature et Enluminées, avec leurs Explications' was published between 1766 and 1768 with engravings by Adam Wolfgang Winterschmidt.
[Approximately: 'Recreational Microscopy for the Spirit and the Eyes, Containing Fifty Coloured Drawings from Nature with Explanations' - this is the title from Volume One]

⊕Volume One (note: after clicking 'See digitalized document', click the little folder icon top left to get thumbnail pages)
⊕Volume Two
⊕Volume Three
⊕Previously

Walter Burley Griffin

"Walter Burley Griffin's Plan of Canberra as finally revised and accepted 1913"
[satellite map]

"Unidentified municipal incinerator No. 1, 1930s"

"Perspective view of incinerator, Thebarton, South Australia, ca. 1937"

"Perspective view of Brunswick incinerator, Brunswick, Victoria 1934"

"Oblique perspective view of unidentified municipal incinerator, 1930s"

"Oblique perspective view of unidentified municipal incinerator, 1930s"

"Exterior facade perspective of Romance Theatre, Melbourne, Victoria 1931"

"Elevation of Jwala Bank, Jhansi, India 1936"

"Perspective of General Post Office, Sydney
showing proposed additions and alterations 1919"

"Opera House for Sydney 1938"

Walter Burley Griffin (1876-1937) was a Chicago architect with a background in landscape design. He is closely associated with the Prairie School, a uniquely American style of architecture that favoured horizontal lines (reflecting prairies) and whose most famous practitioner was Frank Lloyd Wright.

Griffin worked under Wright for a few years at the beginning of the 20th century until they had a dispute over salary payments. Ultimately, this led to an irreconcilable estrangement, and it seems Wright was rather disparaging of Griffin's talents whenever he referred to him later on.

One of the benefits of the association with Wright (beyond the obvious professional influence) was that Griffin met his future wife, Marion Mahony, at the Wright office. She, too, was an architect and a particularly gifted draughtsman (draughtswoman?).

"In the 28 years of their architectural partnership, the Griffins designed over 350 building, landscape and urban-design projects as well as designing construction materials, interiors, furniture and other household items."

Dare I suggest that their marriage was established on a strong foundation? It was while they were on their honeymoon that the Griffins learned of a competition to design the city of Canberra which would become the new capital city of Australia (1927). They "worked feverishly to prepare the plans" before the submission deadline.

Their proposal was of course the winning entry (1912) and gave the Griffins international recognition. Of the Canberra plan, Walter Burley Griffin remarked:

"I have planned a city that is not like any other in the world. I have planned it not in a way that I expected any government authorities in the world would accept. I have planned an ideal city - a city that meets my ideal of the city of the future."

Whether or not a survey among Australians today would give such a favourable review of the outcome is perhaps a moot point. The circular alignments and satellite arrangements of the suburbs evoke an overtly artificial reality, but after visiting (and, significantly, not living in) Canberra many times over the last couple of decades, I've become comfortable with its atmosphere at least. And, as a government bureaucracy-heavy city, it's fairly well appointed with amenities like good quality transport and roads, as well as cultural establishments. It's also close to our snowfields which is a big plus! An eponymous lake, built in 1963 in the centre of Canberra, assures that anyone who visits the city is familiar with the name of Burley Griffin.

The Griffins moved to Australia soon after their Canberra design was selected and they stayed for the next twenty-odd years. Walter Burley Griffin died in Lucknow in India in 1937 following a two year stint working in the sub-continent.

I was particularly taken with the modernist/Art Deco building designs and I'm sure I've over emphasised - in the selection above - the prevalence of incinerator designs among his legacy. It would be a starving architect that tried to rely upon municipal incinerator designing for a decent living in today's world.

• The Australian National Library purchased the last private collection of Walter Burley Griffin material in recent years. The images above were selected from more than two thousand drawings, lithographs, photographs, transparencies, postcards and negatives that were digitised and uploaded late last year (The Eric Milton Nicholls Collection). [I think I must have searched on 'plan' or 'drawing' or the somesuch]
• The extensive Griffin Society site (Australia) has a large gallery of images.
• 'An Ideal City - the 1912 Competition to Design Canberra' is a great site. They have the top forty six short-listed designs from the competition - a kind of 'unrealised Canberra' - from which I would have appropriated some images if they weren't all posted within Zoomify constraints.
• 'Walter Burley Griffin - In His Own Right' - an extensive PBS site arising from a documentary made a decade ago.
• 'Prairie Styles - An Online Museum of Prairie Style Architecture' has a quick overview gallery of some houses in Illinois designed by Griffin (before leaving for Australia).
• The Walter Burley Griffin Society of America.
• Wikipedia: Walter Burley Griffin/Prairie School.

The Othmer Library of Chemical History

Title: 'Artis Magnae Artilleriae : Pars Prima'
Author: Kazimierz Siemienowicz
Date: 1650
Related: Pleasured by Pyrotechnia/combat








Title: 'Actorum laboratorii chymici monacensis Physica subterranea profundam subterraneorum genesin, e principiis hucusque ignotis, ostendens : opus sine pari, primum hactenus et princeps, editio novissima / ... Joh. Joachimi Beccheri ... praefatione utili praemissa, indice locupletissimo adornato, sensuumque et rerum distinctionibus, libro tersius et curatius edendo, operam navavit et Specimen beccherianum, fundamentorum documentorum, experimentorumsubjunxit' [Volume I & II]
Author: Johann Joachim Becher
Date: 1738 [9th Ed.]

{"Allegorical frontispiece with alchemical imagery, showing the Sun and Moon as givers of all terrestrial and subterrestrial life. In the bowels of Mother Earth the metals mature towards their perfection. The two hands parting the curtain signify 'Reason' and 'Experience'. The hermaphrodite 'Cosmic Man', itself symbolising the alchemist, holds a lyre representing 'Harmony' and a triangle, representing 'Symmetry'. Illustration from the 1738 edition of 'Physica subterranea' ('The Physics of Things beneath the Earth') by Johann Joachim Becher (1635-1682). This edition of the work which was originally published in 1667, includes Becher's alchemical ideas and experiments on the nature of minerals and other substances."*}





Title: 'Beauties Treasury, or, The ladies vade mecum : being a collection of the newest, most select and valuable receipts, for making all sorts of cosmetick-washes, oils, unguents, waters, &c. Useful in repairing lost beauty, maintaining and improving good complections, removing blemishes of any kind, and procuring handsomeness. To which are added, receipts for making the best cordial-waters, as also the finest essences, and especially a collection of the best perfumes and excellent snuffs'
Author: JW
Date: 1705
See: vade mecum





Title: 'Acta Literaria Sveciae Upsaliae Publicata'
Author: multiple
Date: 1720-1734





Title: 'Alchemiae Gebri Arabis Philosophi Solertissimi : Libri, cum Reliquis, ut Uersa Pagella Indicabit'
Author: Geber (13th cent)
Date: 1545





Title: 'Alchymistisch Sieben-Gestirn, das ist: Sieben schöne und außerlesene Tractätlein vom Stein der Weisen, darinn der richtige Weg zu solchem aller höchsten Geheimuß zu kommen hell und klar gezeiget wird... Aus dem Latein ins Hochdeutsche treulich übergesetzet'
Author: ?
Date: 1675





Title: 'Anfangsgründe der Theoretischen Chemie'
Author: Pierre Joseph Macquer
Date: 1768





Title: 'Allgemeine Grundsätze der Bleichkunst, oder, Theoretische und praktische Anleitung zum Bleichen des Flachses, der Baumwolle, Wolle und Seide : so wie der aus ihren gesponnenen Garne, und gewebten oder gewürkten Zeuge : nach den neusten Erfahrungen der Physik, Chemie und Technologie'
Author: Sigismund Friedrich Hermbstädt
Date: 1804





Title: 'An account of a method of preserving water at sea from putrefaction, and of restoring to the water its original pleasantness and purity, by a cheap and easy process : to which is added a mode of impregnating water, in large quantities, with fixed air, for medicinal uses, on board ships, and in hospitals ; and likewise a process for the preparation of artificial yeast'
Author: Thomas Henry
Date: 1781





Title: 'An account of the first aerial voyage in England : in a series of letters to his guardian, Chevalier Gherardo Compagni, written under the impressions of the various events that affected the undertaking'
Author: Vincent Lunardi
Date: 1784





Title: 'Fleta minor : the laws of art and nature, in knowing, judging, assaying, fining, refining and inlarging the bodies of confin'd metals, in two parts' [originally in German as: 'Beschreibung aller fürnemisten mineralischen Ertzt']
Author: Lazarus Erckern/Sir John Pettus
Date: 1683





Title: 'Anatomia auri, siue Tyrocinium medico-chymicum : continens in se partes quinque : quarum I. Tradit concordantiam et harmoniam solis coelestis cum auro terrestri : item auri definitionem et confusam multorum physicorum de auro opinionem. II. Agit de medicinis aureis et receptis antiquorum ac recentium medicorum, aurum ingredientibus, tàm in simplici, quàm praeparata forma. III. Tractat de auri potabilis praeparatione tàm vulgari, quàm philosophica. IV. Exhibet usum medicinalem auri potabilis tàm communis, quàm veri et philosophici. V. Demonstrat ideam lapidis philosophici in duodecim figuris'
Author: Johann Daniel Mylius
Date: 1628








Title: 'Anchora sacra ; vel, Scorzonera : ad normam et formam Academiae naturae-curiosorum elaborata'
Author: Johann Michael Fehr
Date: ?1666





Title: 'Anfangsgründe der Physik als Vorbereitung zum Studium der Chemie'
Author: Benjamin Scholz
Date: 1816








Title: 'Anleitung zu der Bergbaukunst nach ihrer Theorie und Ausäbung : nebst einer Abhandlung von den Grundsätzen der Berg-Kammeralwissenschaft, für die kaiserl. königl. Schemnitzer Bergakademie entworfen'
Author: Christoph Traugott Delius
Date: 1773





Title: 'A brief exposition of the science of mechanical electricity : subsidiary to the course of chemical instruction in the University of Pennsylvania'
Author: Robert Hare
Date: 1835



The Donald F. and Mildred Topp Othmer Library of Chemical History is part of the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Within the Othmer Library is the Roy G. Neville Historical Chemical Library.

**Images from more than 4000 rare chemistry books from the Neville Collection were placed online late last year.**

There are between one and fifteen images from each book available. The selection above comes from the first ten pages of the database so they represent a small sprinkling from less than one eighth of what's on offer. I don't think I've made it to titles beginning with 'B' yet. I predict a couple more sampling posts during the next year.

It's a little odd in so far as the material is presented as part of the normal library catalogue (which times out if not being used by the way) and as far as I have found, is not indexed at all by search engines. There is no question that all of these books are actually rare - some of them are singularly unique to this collection - and at a guess, I recognised perhaps five percent of the images/titles/authors.

Where you see the word 'more' below the catalogue entry, this indicates that that there is more than just the title page image available.

As you can no doubt deduce from the array of images above, the collection ranges across a large number of interrelated fields such as alchemy, metallurgy, mining, botany, manufacturing, distilling, magnetics, electricity, artillery, emblemata, pharmacology and on and on. It seems that if any text had a chemistry component of any sort, it was fair game for inclusion in the collection.

It's definitely worthwhile looking around both the Chemical Heritage Foundation and Othmer Library sites - there are online exhibitions, featured book displays and further resources I haven't yet explored.

My sincere thanks to Bennett Gilbert, a retired rare book dealer from L.A., who passed on the details about this site a few months ago.

UPDATE: The Chemical Heritage Foundation now have a flickr account and are uploading a wide variety of material, including prints/book illustrations (via).