Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.19711

    Coffee bean

    Date
    1766
    Creator
    Adam Wolfgang Winterschmidt (1733 - 1796, German) , Engraver
    After
    Martin Frobene Ledermuller (1719 - 1769, German) , Naturalist
    Object type
    Library reference
    48660
    Material
    Technique
    Dimensions
    height (print): 245mm
    width (print): 195mm
    Subject
    Biology
       > Botany
    Biology
       > Natural history
    Physics
       > Optics
          > Microscopy
    Description
    Study of a coffee bean showing the sponge-like interior of the bean as viewed by microscope, and other studies.

    Inscribed above: ‘TAB. XCVIII.’

    The accompanying text is headed: ‘Germe du Caffee’ [‘Coffee bean’]. The author compares his observations on the coffee bean to those of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’s: ‘Leeuwenhoek n'a fait aussi aucune mention des globules de seve, qui remplissent par millions tout le germe & gui j'ai marques ici autant que j'ai pu’ [‘Leeuwenhoek also made no mention of the globules of sap, which fill by the millions all the bean & which I have marked here as much as I could..’].

    Plate 98 from Amusement microscopique, tant pour l'esprit que pour les yeux, contenant... estampes... d'apres nature...by Martin Frobene Ledermuller, plates volume (Adam Wolfgang Winterschmidt, Nuremburg, 1764).

    Martin Frobene [Frobenius] Ledermuller (1719-1769) German naturalist was employed in various capacities as a notary, turning to microscope studies after an illness induced temporary deafness.
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > Germany
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