Images
from G.B.Agricola, De Re Metallica published in Basel
in 1550. The woodcuts are by H.R.M.Deutsch after Blasius Weffring.
Here are some characteristic examples of the graphic conventions.
Although much of the substance of the work has been superseded, the
289 woodcuts are models of book illustration in the cause of information.
Agricola writes "I have hired illustrators to delineate their
forms, lest descriptions which are to be conveyed by words should
either not be understood by men of our own times, or should cause
difficulty to posterity." The illustrations were so many and
so complicated that they delayed the final year of publication.
The book is probably the earliest to present a body of knowledge on
mining from direct and first hand experience. The author makes great
play of leaving out anything he has not witnessed himself. Dover Books
of New York have published an excellent reprint of the translation
as prepared by the future President of the United States, Herbert
Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover in 1912.
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