Scientific Illustration

prehistoric-birds:

Moa: The Life and Death of New Zealand’s Legendary Bird

By Quinn Berentson

The moa were the most unusual and unique family of birds that ever lived, a clan of feathered monsters that developed in isolation for many, many millions of years. They became extinct reasonably quickly after the arrival of the Maori, and were a distant memory by the time European explorers arrived. So the discovery and identification of their bones in the 1840s was a worldwide sensation, claimed by many to be the zoological find of the century.

This book begins by recounting the story of discovery, which was characterised by an unbelievable amount of controversy and intrigue. Since then there has been an unbroken chain of new discoveries, culminating with intriguing revelations in recent years about the moa’s biology, that have come to light through DNA testing and radio-dating.

This is a fascinating and important book that richly recounts the life and death of our strangest bird. Packed with a fantastic range of illustrations, Moa fills an important gap in our natural history literature, a popular but serious book on this national icon.

(Find out more —> Craig Potton Publishing)

theartofgooglebooks:

Employee holds plate closed. Discovered by Christina Paik of Dr. Terry Harpold’s University of Florida course Paratexts.

From the back matter of A Description of the Mermaid, Now Offered to the Inspection of the Public, which was Found on Board a Native Vessel in the Archipelago of the Malaccas, and Carried to Batavia in a Dutch Ship (date unknown). Original from Oxford University. Digitized May 18, 2009.

theartofgooglebooks:

Plate left folded.

From p. 108 (?) of An Introduction to the True Astronomy: or, Astronomical Lectures, Read in the Astronomical School of the University of Oxford by John Keill (1739). Original from Ghent University. Digitized January 22, 2008.

theartofgooglebooks:

Plate left folded.

From A Treatise on the Ananas or Pine-apple by Adam Taylor (1769). Original from Oxford University. Digitized May 15, 2006.

theartofgooglebooks:

Moiré in color spectrum charts.

From The Theory of Color and Its Relation to Art and Art-Industry by Wilhelm von Bezold (1876). Original from Harvard University. Digitized April 15, 2008.

wired:

Without the work of intellectual giants like Einstein, Newton and Darwin, we might still be in the dark ages. But how many scientists still read the dust-ridden texts where these luminaries first expounded their theories? Thanks to the internet, you no longer have to hunt down these yellowing tomes in a moldy library vault. Here’s the story of 9 famous publications that spun the scientific world off its orbit.

(via biomedicalephemera)

inkmaps:

annadoll2001:

Trepanning instruments, circa 1790

These illustrations are from a book on European medicine introduced to Japan via the Dutch trading post at Nagasaki. Pictured here are various trepanning tools used to bore holes in the skull as a form of medical treatment.

Ah, an illustration of how I feel this week. 

theartofgooglebooks:

Foreshortening of the body when a plate is left folded; fracturing the body with the page gutter.

From A System of Anatomy for the Use of Students of Medicine, v.1, by Caspar Wistar (1835). Original from Harvard University. Digitized November 27, 2007.

badesaba:

from: Marvels of Creatures and Strange Things Existing, by al-Qazwini 

This copiously illustrated Persian manuscript was made in 974 of the Hijrah [i.e. A.D. 1566] and is a translation of the cosmography, or `Wonders of creation’, originally written in Arabic by the thirteenth-century geographer Zakariya ibn Muhammad al-Qazwini. The miniature shown here illustrates the path of the sun’s rays interrupted by the globe of the Earth at the time of a lunar eclipse.

Zakariya’ ibn Muhammad al-Qazwini (1203 -1283), was a Persian physician, astronomer, geographer and proto-science fiction writer. Born in the Persian town of Qazvin, he served as legal expert and judge (qadhi) in several localities in Persia and at Baghdad. He travelled around in Mesopotamia and Syria, and finally entered the circle patronized by the governor of Baghdad.

he also wrote a futuristic proto-science fiction tale entitled Awaj bin Anfaq, about a man who travelled to Earth from a distant planet.

(via inkmaps)