Posts by Pablo Alvarez

Showing 71 - 80 of 81
Clamshell box storing a Culpeper-Style English Microscope (ca. 1760)
  • Pablo Alvarez
In 2013, an extraordinary collection on the history of medicine was transferred from the Taubman Library to the Special Collections Library, University of Michigan Library. Among the books, we came across three eighteenth-century microscopes stored in plain boxes and in need of conservation treatment. They have now been repaired and are in new homes. Here is a video explaining in detail the conservation work performed in one of these wonderful microscopes.
Louis Troncet. Arithmographe Troncet. Pour les quatre opérations. Calculateur mécanique instantané. Librairie Larousee. Paris, 19 rue Montparnasse, 19, ca. 1900.
  • Pablo Alvarez
Portable calculators are older than we think. For our History of Mathematics Collection, we have recently purchased an example of a small manual calculator, whereby anyone could quickly perform each of the four basic mathematical operations. It was designed by the Frenchman Louis-J. Troncet in 1889.
Plate 24, on the eyes and head of the grey drone-fly, from Micrographia. London: John Martyn & James Allestry. Printers of the Royal Society, 1665
  • Pablo Alvarez
This superb engraving depicts what the seventeenth-century English scientist, Robert Hooke, observed when exposing the head of a grey drone-fly through the lens of a microscope. The greatest section of the head was nothing else but two large “protuberant bunches,” mostly covered by thousands of tiny hemispheres arranged in “triagonal order”.
Gauffered edge from our copy of two medical commentaries by the sixteenth-century Italian doctor, Leon Roganus Caietanus: Leonis Rogani Caietani Medici, in Galeni Libellum de pulsibus, ad tyrones, Commentarius; Leonis Rogani Caietani Medici de urinis libri tres.  Venice: Jacobus de Maria, 1575
  • Pablo Alvarez
This recently acquired edition of two medical commentaries by the sixteenth-century Italian doctor, Leon Roganus Caietanus, is bound in limp vellum with bevelled boards, and the gilded edges of the text block have been expertly decorated, or gauffered, with a special tool.



Orphanage for Armenian boys. January 5, 1920. Aintab, Cilicia. Photograph by George R. Swain
  • Pablo Alvarez
"Now or Never": Collecting, Documenting and Photographing the Aftermath of World War I in the Middle East. This exhibit explores the role of the U-M archaeological expedition (1919-1920), led by Professor Francis Kelsey, as witnesses of the chaos and destruction in the Near East following Germany's surrender to the Entente forces on November 11, 1918.

Front cover of Le Calcul Amusant. La table de Pythagore servie aux petits enfants. Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie. Boulevard Saint-Germain, 79, ca. 1862
  • Pablo Alvarez
We are excited to report about a recent acquisition for our fast growing collection of Children's Literature. It is the first edition of Le calcul amusant (Paris, ca. 1862), a truly entertaining book designed to teach French kids multiplication through colored illustrations and rhyming couplets.
Five seventeenth-century miniature books with texts by Jeremias Drexel (1581-1638)
  • Pablo Alvarez
We may sound playful by making a skeleton pop out from a book, but for centuries images like this one, as found in the printed page, were a serious warning of the imminence of death. For instance, these frightening illustrations were common in the published works of the seventeenth-century Jesuit preacher Jeremias Drexel.
Engraving depicting a Lynx (pag. 36), from our copy of Persio tradotto in verso sciolto e dichiarato da Francesco Stelluti. Roma: Giacomo Mascardi, 1630.
  • Pablo Alvarez
It seems odd that the first recorded images of tiny creatures as seen through the lenses of a microscope were engravings of a bee included in a bilingual edition (Latin and Italian) and commentary of the poetry of the first-century Roman satirist Aulus Persius. But here is the fascinating story explaining it all.
P. Mich. Inv. 6632: A Magical Notebook
  • Pablo Alvarez
We are very pleased to announce that the online exhibit, Puzzle Me This: Early binding fragments from the U of M Papyrology Collection, is now available to the public.
Index librorum prohibitorum: cum regulis confectis per patres a Tridentina synodo delectos (Antwerp: Christopher Plantin, 1570)
  • Pablo Alvarez
Since we are now “celebrating” Banned Books Week, I thought that readers of our blog would be delighted to know that the Special Collections Library holds an important selection of early-printed editions of the justly infamous Index librorum prohibitorum (List of Forbidden Books).