Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.14647

    About cinnabar and gunpowder

    Date
    22 January 1686
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p17b
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 47mm
    width (page): 42mm
    Subject
    Description
    Original drawing belonging to the letter now in EL/L1/79.

    Four figures in a letter from Antoni van Leeuwenhoek to the Royal Society. This is the English copy in the Letter Book of the original Dutch letter.

    Leeuwenhoek put some rain water on the particles of cinnabar to observe salt crystals.
    Fig. I: small crystals with very sharp points
    Figs K and LL: after having made the cinnabar smaller he observed the forms like in these figures. The smallest ones (the second fig. L) were of unspecified shape.

    The figures are copied in LBC/11i/019.
    Object history
    At the meeting of the Royal Society on 31 March 1686, ‘Part of a letter of Mr. Leewenhoeck was read, containing several curious observations on cinnabar and gunpowder’ (Birch 4:470).

    Printed in:
    A. Leeuwenhoek, ‘Several observations on cinnabar and gunpowder’, Phil. Trans. vol. 17, no. 200 (May 1693), pp. 754-60.

    Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, Ontledingen en ontdekkingen. Van de cinnaber naturalis, en bus-poeder; van het maaksel van been en huyd; van de galnoot, kastanie en okkernoot; van de voortteelinge van eenige zaden, vergeleken by de Voortteelinge van Garnaad, krabbe, en kreeft; waar in de deugdsaamheid van het eyken-hout bestaat, en hoe het te kennen is (Leiden: Cornelis Boutesteyn, 1686), pp. 3-24.

    Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, Anatomia Seu interiora Rerum, Cum Animatarum tum Inanimatarum, Ope & beneficio [sic] exquisitissimorum Microscopiorum Detecta, variisque experimentis demonstrata [etc.] (Leiden: C. Boutesteyn, 1687), pp. 178-94.
    Related fellows
    Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632 - 1723, Dutch) , Naturalist
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > Netherlands
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