Credit: © The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.6238
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    Frozen matter

    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
    Biology
    Description
    Microscopic study of a number of frozen materials, including Fig. 1. frozen urine; Fig. 2/3. snowflakes, and; Fig. 4/5/6 flakes of ice.

    Inscribed above: ‘Schem: VIII’

    Written in the associated text: ‘I have very often in a Morning, when there has been a great hoar-frost, with an indifferently magnifying microscope, observ’d the small stirie, or Crystalline beard, which then usually covers the face of most bodies that lie open to the cold air, and found them to be generally Hexangular prismatical bodies’

    Plate 8 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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