J.G. Heck wrote and compiled a fascinating and complex work entitled The Iconographic Encyclopedia of Science, Literature and Art, and was published in America for the first time in 1851 following ...

The Glass Kitchen, the Glass Container Industry's Research Center for the Interpretation of Consumer Needs in Glass Packaged Products and their Containers. NYC, Glass Container Association of America, ...

At first glance this detailed and dense map looks foreboding and somehow off-putting--at least for me, and that was before I understood what the numbers represented. The blue numbers on this section ...

This is the first installment of a chronology of the anatomical representation of the heart, along with a few metaphorical images tossed in. No commentary yet--just a quick post. All images are either ...

These images present an excellent invitation to understanding the size and scope of one section of the opium industry in India. I found these pictures in the 29 July 1882 issue of the Scientific ...

Einstein's Letters of 1939 and 1945 and Szilard's Petition of 1945 There were certainly a number of cautionary flags waved at the Executive Branch in the period just before the atomic bomb was first ...

There have been many Kings of the Hoboes, and Emperor of the Hoboes, in the history of American Hobodom. The most widely recognized of all this royalty is, probably, Mr. Jeff Davis, who was elected ...

Nicolas de Larmessin (1640-1725) was an enormously creative and productive artist, and in his way created a genre similar to the great and ancient Dance of Death/.Danse Macabre/Totentanz--though his ...

This beauty appears in the pages of Scientific American for 1896, and discusses a proposal for a bridge to connect Manhattan to Jersey, and to do so spectacularly. The plan was for the bridge to be ...

J.W. Conway launched this missive into the world in 1935--at a time when left-handedness was deemed to be unacceptable and curable--adding his anti-left-handed sentiments to a teetering pile of other ...

"Simply the thing I am shall make me live."--from Jorge Luis Borges, "Shakespeare’s Memory" It would be a Purgatory, or worse, to suddenly wake up one morning with another person's memory--worse yet ...

There is, buried deep within this engraving, a small but penetrating snapshot of working life in very early 19th century England. Very working life. We'll get to that in a moment, after introductions ...