Imaging science; Physics and Physical Forces Ways in which the graphic arts have demonstrated structures, processes and methods.
 
 
 
C.V.BOYS, SOAP BUBBLES AND THE FORCES THAT MOULD THEM 1890 (1911)

 
01 De Magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus. Here two teams of horses fail to break the vacuum in the Magdeburgian Spheres. The technical details of the spheres are graphically contained within the naturalistic scene where they hover like UFO's.
 
 
02 Otto von Guericke, Experimenta Nova (ut vocantur) Magdeburgica de Vacuo Spatio ,published in 1642 with engravings and folding plates demonstrating aspects of the author's work in creating a vacuum. Here the titlepage from the 1672 edition.
 
03 Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia universalis sive ars magna , Corbelletti, Rome, 2 vols., 1650. Kircher of all the encyclopaedists and polymaths seems to have found the most compelling images to communicate his scientific perceptions. Here is a diagram of the reflective properties of sound in a section on acoustics. Immediately beneath is an illustration from Kircher's Treatise on magnetism.
 
04  Isaac de Caus  

05 from Solomon de Caus, Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes avec divers machines . was published in 1615. De Caus was an inspired engineer and inventor of productive and whimsical machines for industry and human delight. His brother Isaac designed the garden at Wilton, incorporating several schemes of garden machinery particularly in the deployment of water forces.
 
06  Fabrizio Padovani, Tractatus duo alter de ventis alter perbrevis de terremotu ,Bologna, published in 1601, and an early and celebrated attempt to catalogue wind instruments and the effects of wind in the environment. The surreal landscape is viewed through a frame with the domestic note of a small town glimpsed beyond in the landscape.

07  a plate from R.A.F.de Reamur, Konst om tamme-voglen van allerhande soort in alle jaartyden uittebroeijen en optebrengen, zo door 't middel van mest als van 't gewoone vuur , de Hondt 1751.
 
08 Mark Ridley, A Short Treatise of Magneticall Bodies and Motions , Okes, London 1613.
  
09 from G.A.Bockler's Theatrum Machinarum Novum , Cologne 1662 a beautifully drawn urban scene with fire engine, and a cross section through the pipes to help calculate the flow of water.Contained within the single image is the entire process of putting out a fire.
 
10. Jacob Leupold, Theatrum Machinarum Hydrotechnicarum, Leipzig 1724. An image from the classic book on diving and techniques of underwater exploration.
 
 

 
 
 
"The Forerunner of all Modern Physics..." William Gilbert Short London 1600