This early treatise on the chemistry and technology of glassmaking by Antonio Neri revealed the closely guarded secrets of Venetian glassmaking for the first time. The main part of the text deals with the coloring of…

Dedicated to "Sophronia" (Robert Boyle's "dearest sister," Lady Ranelagh), this is a compendium of moral essays that Boyle had previously written in Stalbridge and Oxford. The work draws parallels between natural…

A device for raising water, the Archimedean screw consists of an external cylinder surrounding a screw. The bottom of the cylinder and screw must be immersed in water, which is not correctly depicted here. If the…

First edition published by Heinrich Stayner of De re militari, a classic work on the science of making war by Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus, commonly referred to as Vegetius, a writer from the Later Roman Empire…

First published in 1652, this compilation of English alchemical literature was collected and annotated by Elias Ashmole. The book made available many works that had previously existed only in privately held manuscripts,…

Engraved diagram from George Ripley's The Compound of Alchymie. Known as Ripley's Wheel, the drawing depicts concentric planetary spheres along with his alchemical recipes.

This 17th-century engraving is from Thomas Norton's The Ordinall of Alchimy and was made after a 15th-century illuminated manuscript (now preserved in the British Library). Norton, a practicing alchemist, depicts an…

The engraved emblem on the lower half of this title page was made after a 15th-century illuminated manuscript (now preserved in the British Library) and depicts an eagle, snake, and toad against a solar and lunar…

This 17th-century engraving is from Thomas Norton's The Ordinall of Alchimy and was made after a 15th-century illuminated manuscript (now preserved in the British Library). Norton, a practicing alchemist, depicts the…

Regarded as the earliest, freely-accessible sales catalog of commercially available chemicals and scientific apparatus, Palmer's New Catalogue by Edward Palmer (1803-1872) provides insight into the costs and…

The first 16 figures represent the atoms of different elastic fluids, drawn in squares of different magnitude in proportion to the diameters of the atoms.

Fig. 17 exhibits curve lines by which the boiling point of…

Figs. 1-3 represent profile views of the disposition and arrangement of hydrogen, nitrous, and carbonic acid gas particles.

Fig. 4 is the representation of four particles of azote with their elastic atmospheres, marked…

Continued from plate 5.

This plate exhibits various symbols devised to represent simple and compound elements; they are nearly the same as in plate 4, only extended and corrected.

This plate contains the arbitrary marks or signs chosen to represent several chemical elements, from simple elements such as hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen, to septenary elements such as an atom of sugar.

Fig. 1 represents particles (balls) of water, the square form denoting the arrangement in water.

Fig, 2 represents particles (balls) of water, the rhomboidal form denoting the arrangement in ice.

Fig. 3 represents the…

Fig. 1 represents an air thermometer, or the expansion of air by heat.

Fig. 2 is the logarithmic curve.

Fig. 3 is a device suggested by "Mr. Ewart," to illustrate Dalton's idea on the temperature of the atmosphere.

Fig. 1 is intended to illustrate Dalton's ideas on the subject of the capacities of bodies for heat.

Fig. 2 is a comparative view of the old and new divisions of the scale of the mercurial thermometer.

FIg. 3 is a…

First edition of a milestone work in the history of chemistry, in which Dalton announced his revolutionary atomic theory and laws of definite and multiple proportions. As outlined by Dalton, these fundamental laws…