Posts by 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.

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”.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

We have recently purchased an engraved broadside (259 x 339 mm.) depicting what at first sight looks like a regular scene of family life in the seventeenth century. However, a closer examination reveals a very different picture: a dysfunctional household or, to be more precise, a satire of domestic happiness...