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This collection of essays discusses the marketing of scientific and medical instruments from the eighteenth century to the First World War. The evidence presented here is derived from sources as diverse as contemporary trade literature, through newspaper advertisements, to rarely-surviving inventories, and from the instruments themselves. The picture may not yet be complete, but it has been acknowledged that it is more complex than sketched out twenty-five or even fifty years ago. Here is a collection of case-studies from the United Kingdom, the Americas and Europe showing instruments moving from maker to market-place, and, to some extent, what happened next. Contributors are: Alexi Baker, Paolo Brenni, Laura Cházaro, Gloria Clifton, Peggy Aldrich Kidwell, Richard L. Kremer, A.D. Morrison-Low, Joshua Nall, Sara J. Schechner, and Liba Taub.
The volume forms a part of the celebrations marking the anniversary of the invention of the telescope. From its Renaissance beginnings to yesterday’s Cold War, the essays contributed here throw a spotlight on a number of significant episodes in the continuing adventures of this well-loved instrument, which has played a crucial role in Man’s thinking about his position – literally and philosophically – in the universe. Drawn from various conferences held by the Scientific Instrument Commission of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science between 2007 and 2009, these papers make a substantial contribution to our current knowledge about this fascinating optical instrument.
A discussion of the pioneers of the first decades of photography, along with essays on early collectors and patents.
Disciples of Light contains almost two hundred of the earliest known English and Scottish photographs, most of which have never been published. The volume includes all the significant photographs in the album, compiled by Sir David Brewster, an important early patron of photography. Photographs by William Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of negative-positive paper photography, are included, as well as works by other photographers who improved upon Talbot's invention. The text discusses the context in which the album was compiled, the personalities of the photographers, and the groups of specific images that it contains. Numerous comparative illustrations are included, as well as a checklist of all photographic images, a bibliography, and an index of all proper names and place names.
A uniquely personal account of the life and enduring legacy of the Renaissance library With the advent of print in the fifteenth century, Europe’s cultural elite assembled personal libraries as refuges from persecutions and pandemics. Andrew Hui tells the remarkable story of the Renaissance studiolo—a “little studio”—and reveals how these spaces dedicated to self-cultivation became both a remedy and a poison for the soul. Blending fresh, insightful readings of literary and visual works with engaging accounts of his life as an insatiable bookworm, Hui traces how humanists from Petrarch to Machiavelli to Montaigne created their own intimate studies. He looks at imaginary libraries in...
Collections of scientific instruments originated as part of Renaissance collections of 'naturalia' and 'artificialia'. Surveying and astronomical instruments were common in such collections, their role being to impress visitors by displaying the power that a ruler acquired through the control of nature. This book offers selected studies of notable European collections of scientific instruments from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. These studies also present the work of important instrument makers of the time, and their relations with patrons and rulers. A final section focuses on the role of modern museums and collectors in saving this scientific heritage from dispersal. The result is a contemporary perspective on the formation of the most important museums of the history of science. Contributors include: Paolo Brenni, Filippo Camerota, Gloria Clifton, Wolfram Dolz, Sven Dupré, Karsten Gaulke, Sven Hauschke, Michael Korey, Mara Miniati, Tatiana M. Moisseeva, Peter Plaßmeyer, Klaus Schillinger, Giorgio Strano, Koenraad Van Cleempoel, and Ewa Wyka. Scientific Instruments and Collections, 1
A Bridge to the Sky explores the close connections between science, arts, and visual culture as they developed in the medieval Islamic lands. It presents a significant study of the career of 'Abbas Ibn Firnas, (d. 887), the most celebrated 'scientist' and polymath of early Islamic Spain, best known for conducting an experiment that has been celebrated as a milestone in the history of human flight.
The first complete and detailed catalogue of Lavoisier’s collection of instruments preserved at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris. The story of the collection is carefully reconstructed and its instruments (all illustrated) are described in detail.
Almost immediately after the invention of photography, Scottish photographers took their clunky cameras on the road to capture the stories of peoples and communities touched by the forces of British imperialism. For the next thirty years, their journeys would take them far from their homes in the Lowlands to the Canadian wilderness and the treaty ports and rivers of China. The Global Flows of Early Scottish Photography is about the interplay between these photographers' ambitions and the needs and desires of the people they met. Anthony Lee tracks the work of several famous innovators of the art form, including the pioneering team of D.O. Hill and Robert Adamson in Edinburgh; Canada's first ...
This original work contains the first detailed account of the natural philosophy of Robert Hooke (1635-1703), leading figure of the early Royal Society. From celestial mechanics to microscopy, from optics to geology and biology, Hooke’s contributions to the Scientific Revolution proved decisive. Focusing separately on partial aspects of Hooke’s works, scholars have hitherto failed to see the unifying idea of the natural philosophy underlying them. Some of his unpublished papers have passed almost unnoticed. Hooke pursued the foundation of a real, mechanical and experimental philosophy, and this book is an attempt to reconstruct it. The book includes a selection of Hooke's unpublished papers. Readers will discover a study of the new science through the works of one of the most known protagonists. Challenging the current views on the scientific life of restoration England, this book sheds new light on the circulation of Baconian ideals and the mechanical philosophy in the early Royal Society. This book is a must-read to anybody interested in Hooke, early modern science or Restoration history.