Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.18179

    Refraction

    Date
    1665
    Creator
    Unknown, Engraver
    After
    Robert Hooke (1635 - 1703, British) , Natural Philosopher
    Object type
    Library reference
    RCN 45230
    Material
    Technique
    Subject
    Physics
       > Optics
          > Microscopy
    Description
    Various geometric diagrams depicting light rays interacting with glass. Intended as a visual representation of Robert Hooke’s experimentation into how best to improve the microscope.

    Inscribed above: ‘Schem VI’

    Written in the associated text: ‘I have made a Microscope with one piece of Glass, both whose surfaces were plains, I have made another only with a plano concave, without any kind of reflection, divers also by means of reflection. I have made others of Waters, Gums, Resins, Salts, Arsenick, Oyls, and with divers other mixtures of watery and oyly Liquors. And indeed the subject is capable of a great variety; but I find generally none more useful then that which is made with two Glasses’.

    Plate 6 from Robert Hooke’s Micrographia: or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses with observations and inquiries thereupon (1665), the first fully-illustrated book on the topic of microscopy. In the preface Hooke asserts that he had discovered ‘a new visible World’.

    Robert Hooke (1635-1703) British natural philosopher was a founding member of the Royal Society, elected in 1663.
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > United Kingdom
    Powered by CollectionsIndex+/CollectionsOnline