Credit: © The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.1886
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    Stone, sponge and seaweed

    Date
    1665
    Creator
    Unknown, Engraver
    After
    Robert Hooke (1635 - 1703, British) , Natural Philosopher
    Object type
    Image reference
    Library reference
    RCN 45230
    Material
    Technique
    Dimensions
    height (print): 300mm
    width (print): 180mm
    Subject
    Physics
       > Optics
          > Microscopy
    Content object
    nature
       > plant
    Description
    Microscopic study of three specimens: Fig. 1. a sample of stone extracted from a quarry in Kettering, Northamptonshire [top]; Fig. 2. the fibres in a piece of sponge [bottom right], and; Fig. 3. an isolated section of seaweed [bottom left].

    Inscribed above: ‘Schem IX’

    Written in the associated text: ‘It [the stone] is made up of an innumerable company of small bodies, not all of the same size or shape, but for the most part, not much differing from a Globular form, nor exceed they one another in diameter above three or four times; they appear to the eye, like the Cobb or Ovary of a Herring […]’

    Plate 9 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. Before his career with the Royal Society, Hooke had been apprenticed to painter Peter Lely (1618-1680), where he learned to draw and paint. Though he did not engrave the images in Micrographia himself they were engraved after his illustrations.
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > United Kingdom
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