From Cave Paintings to the Internet A Chronological and Thematic Database on the History of Information and Media 1700 to 1750 Timeline

French dance notator, publisher and choreographer Raoul Auger (or Anger) Feuillet publishes Chorégraphie, ou l'art de d'écrire la danse.  

Feuillet's work included the first publication of the system of dance notation used in Baroque dance, known as Beauchamp-Feuillet notation. This notation was commissioned by Louis XIV, who had founded the Académie Royale de Danse in 1661, and devised in the 1680s by Pierre Beauchamp. The system was widely used throughout the 18th century.

"This manual details a dance notation system that indicates the placement of the feet and six basic leg movements: plié, releveé, sauté, cabriole, tombé, and glissé. Changes of body direction and numerous ornamentations of the legs and arms are also part of the system. The system is based on tract drawings that trace the pattern of the dance. Additionaly, bar lines in the dance score correspond to bar lines in the music score. Signs written on the right or left hand side of the tract indicate the steps" (Library of Congress, Dance Instruction Manuals where you can page through a virtual facsimile of the 1713 printing at this link, accessed 04-05-2009).

Dutch anatomist Frederik Ruysch publishes Thesaurus anatomicus in ten parts in Amsterdam from 1701 to 1716, and the first and only part of his Thesaurus animalium in 1710. An index to the Thesaurus anatomicus appeared in 1725.

Probably the most original artist in the history of anatomical preparations, Ruysch enjoyed making up elaborate three-dimensional emblems of mortality from his specimens. These fantastic, dream-like concoctions constructed of human anatomical parts are illustrated in the Thesaurus on large folding plates mostly engraved by Cornelis Huyberts, who also engraved plates for the painter Gérard de Lairesse, illustrator of Govert Bidloo’s anatomy. In their dreamlike qualities many of the plates depicting the preparations reflect surrealism centuries before surrealism became fashionable. Ruysch’s Thesaurus anatomicus and his Thesaurus animalium describe and illustrate the spectacular collections of “Anatomical Treasures” which he produced for display in his home museum between 1701 and 1716 using secret methods of anatomical injection and preservation.

Ruysch's unique anatomical preparations attracted many notables to his museum, including Czar Peter the Great of Russia, who was so fascinated with the preparations that he attended Ruysch’s anatomy lectures, and in 1717 he bought Ruysch’s entire collection, along with that of the Amsterdam apothecary Albert Seba, for Russia's first public museum, the St. Petersburg Kunstkammer. Over the years most of the dry preparations in St. Petersburg deteriorated or disappeared, but some of those preserved in glass jars remain. A few later specimens by Ruysch, auctioned off by his widow after his death, are also preserved in Leiden. Because most of the preparations did not survive, Ruysch’s preparations, and his museum, are known primarily from these publications.

Ruysch's methods allowed him to prepare organs such as the liver and kidneys and keep entire corpses for years. He used a mixture of talc, white wax, and cinnabar for injecting vessels and an embalming fluid of alcohol made from wine or corn with black pepper added. Using his injection methods Ruysch was the first to demonstrate the occurrence of blood vessels in almost all tissues of the human body, thereby destroying the Galenic belief that certain areas of the body had no vascular supply. He was also the first to show that blood vessels display diverse organ-specific patterns. He investigated the valves in the lymphatic system, the bronchial arteries and the vascular plexuses of the heart, and was the first to point out the nourishment of the fetus through the umbilical cord. Ruysch's discoveries led him to claim erroneously that tissues consisted solely of vascular networks, and to deny the existence of glandular tissue. 

Impey & Macgregor (eds.) The Origins of Museums (1985)  55-56. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 1875.  Rosamond Purcell & Stephen Gould, Finders, Keepers: Eight Collectors (1992) chapter 1 reproduces spectacular color images of Ruysch’s preparations from Czar Peter’s Wunderkammer, and Leiden.  Roberts & Tomlinson, The Fabric of the Human Body (1992) 290-98.

Edward and Elizabeth Mallet begin publishing the Daily Courant, England’s first daily newspaper.

The Daily Courant continued publication for 30 years.

Isaac Newton publishes Opticks: Or a Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of light.  Also Two Treatises of the Species and Magnitude of Curvilinear Figures.

Unlike most of Newton's works, Opticks was originally published in English, with the Latin version following in 1706.  The work summarized Newton's discoveries and theories concerning light and color: the spectrum of the sunlight, the degrees of refraction associated with different colors, the color circle (the first in the history of color theory), the invention of the reflecting telescope; the first workable theory of the rainbow, and experiments on what would later be called "interference effects" in conjunction with Newton's rings.  His discovery of periodicity in Newton's rings, which would later prove to be so useful to Thomas Young, led Newton to postulate that periodicity was a fundamental property either of light waves or of waves associated with light.  Nevertheless, Newton preferred the corpuscular theory of light, with which he is usually associated, because of its explanatory value for certain optical phenomena and because it a llowed him to link the action of gross bodies with the action of light. The first edition of the Opticks ends with two mathematical treatises in Latin, written to establish his priority over Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in the invention of the calculus.

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 1588. Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man (1967) no. 172.

The Boston News-Letter begins publication, edited and published by John Campbell, a bookseller and postmaster of Boston. 

This was the first “successful” newspaper in the North American colonies.

The first printing house in the Arab world that printed in Arabic was opened by the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan  Athanasius al-Dabbas in Aleppo, Syria, "after he had helped to print two Arabic books in Romania at the beginning of the 18th century. This gave him the needed insight and expertise to run an own press the equipment of which he had received as a gift from the ruler of Walachia" (http://pagesperso-orange.fr/colloque.imprimes.mo/pdf/CWR0.pdf).

Within the first year al-Dabbas issued two books, a Book of Psalms and a Gospel book. 

Schnurrer, Bibliotheca Arabica (1811) p. 374. The Gospel book printed in Arabic is described and illustrated in Lehrstuhl für Türkische Sprache, Geschichte und Kultur, Universität Bamberg, The Beginnings of Printing in the Near and Middle East: Jews, Christians and Muslims (2001) no. 3.

The sale by auction of the Bigot family library was conducted by booksellers Jean Boudot, Charles Osmont and Gabriel Martin over the remarkably long duration five months. Prior to this auction several auction catalogues for private libraries were printed in Paris but the libraries were sold privately before auctions could occur. The Bigot sale was in five parts comprising 450 manuscripts and over 15,000 printed books. Bookseller, publisher and writer Prosper Marchand organized and catalogued the sale for Martin and Osmont. See Berkvens-Stevelink, Prosper Marchand: la vie et oeuvre (1987) 11-22.

The published auction catalogue was entitled Bibliotheca Bigotiana; seu, Catalogus librorum, quos (dum viverent) summâ curâ & industriâ, ingentique sumptu congressêre vir clarissimi DD. uterque Joannes, Nicolaus, & Lud. Emericus Bigotii, domini de Sommesnil & de Cleuville. . . . 

"According to Olivier, the Library was begun by Jean Bigot in the early 17th century, and continued by his son, Louis-Emery; it eventually passed to Robert Bigot, sieur de Monville, and was sold at his death in 1706. The library included that of Jean-Jacques de Mesmes. The abbé de Louvois purchased many books for the Bibliothèque du roi; Franklin records that the library was purchased by the king. This was Gabriel Martin's first catalogue, and according to Bléchet, Jean-Pierre Nicéron was an editor" (North, Printed Catalogues of French Book Auctions and Sales by Private Treaty 1643-1830 in the Library of the Grolier Club [2004] no. 12).

The Bigot manuscripts were purchased for the Bibliothèque du roi. Over 150 years later they were catalogued by Léopold Delisle as Bibliotheca Bigotiana Manuscripta. Catalogue des manuscrits rassemblés aux XVIIe siecle par les Bigot, mis en vente au mois de juillet 1706, aujourdhui conservé aux Bibliothèque nationale (1877).

An anonymous third edition of Traite de la peinture en mignature printed in The Hague describes trichromancy in terms of three Couleurs primitives--yellow, red and blue.

At this time Jacob Christophe le Blon was working as a miniaturist in Amsterdam.

Bernard de Montfaucon, a Benedictine monk, publishes Palaeographia Graeca in Paris.

This work coined the term palaeography (paleography) and founded Byzantine (Greek) paleography in particular.

Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man (1967) no. 175.

Johann Gottfried Zeidler publishes Johann Gottfried Zeidlers Buchbinder-Philosophie oder Einleitung in die Buchbinder Kunst, darinnen die selbe aus dem Buch der natur und eigener Erfahrung Philosophisch abgehandelt wird, mit sonderbahren Anmerckungen Zweyer Wohlerfahrner Buchbinder und jegehöigen Kopffern.

This work, issued with 5 plates, and woodcuts in the text, was the earliest technical manual on bookbinding. It included the earliest picture of a type holder for lettering.

Pollard, Early Bookbinding Manuals (1984) no. 16.

Gottfried Wilhlem Leibniz publishes "Brevis descriptio Machinae Arithmeticae, cum Figura" in Miscellanea Berolinensis (1710) 317-19, fig. 73.

This was the first description of Leibniz's stepped-drum calculator, or stepped reckoner. Because Leibniz had only two working examples of the machine made, and one was lost, his invention of the stepped reckoner was primarily known through this and other publications.

Isaac Newton publishes Analysis per quantitatum series, fluxiones, ac differentias cum enumeratione linearum tertii ordinis, edited by William Jones.

This was the first printing of Newton's tracts De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas" and Methodus differentialis, together with reprints of the tracts on quadratures and cubics first published in Opticks (1704).  De analysi, Newton's first independent treatise on higher mathematics, was written in 1669 to protect his priority in the invention of the calculus. It contains the earliest printed account of Newton's generalized binomial theorem.  In 1711, Newton permitted mathematician William Jones (one of the few allowed access to Newton's manuscripts) to publish these four tracts. Aside from his association with Newton, Jones is chiefly remembered for having introduced the symbol  Π into mathematical notation.

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 1590.

In response to Leibniz’s appeal to the Royal Society for a fair hearing concerning the dispute over the invention of the differential calculus between Newton and himself, the Royal Society issues Commercium epistolicum D. Johannis Collins, et aliorum de analysi promota: Jussu Societatis Regiae in lucem editum.

The report was hardly impartial, however, because Newton, as the president of the Royal Society, hand-picked a committee of supporters to review the case and composed its favorable findings himself.  The John Collins mentioned in the title was a bookseller, amateur mathematician and member of the Royal Society. In 1669, Collins was sent a copy of Newton's manuscript on the calculus, De analysi, portions of which Leibniz transcribed in 1676.

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 1591.

White Kennett, Bishop of Peterborough, England, publishes in London Bibliothecae Americanae Primordia. An Attempt Towards Laying the Foundation of an American Library, in Several Books, Papers, and Writings, Humbly given to the Society for Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. . . .

Published in an edition of 250 copies, this was the library of the first collector of historical documents on the continent of North America. It was also the first bibliography of Americana, carefully listing in chronological order books, charts, maps, and documents with a detailed alphabetical index.

Breslauer & Folter, Bibliography: Its History and Development (1984) no. 93.

Johann Conrad Zeltner publishes Correctorum in typogaphiis eruditorum centuria speciminis loco collecta in Nuremberg at the press of A. J. Felsecker.

"Zeltner's bio-bibliography of 100 proofreaders and press correctors from the 15th to the beginning of the 18th century includes such luminaries as Henri I Estienne (and a history of his printing house), Michael Servetus, Josse Bade, Coverdale, G.A. Bussi (who worked for Sweynheim and Pannartz), Erasmus, Plantin, Isaac Casaubon, Oporinus, Paolo Manuzio, Rabii Jacob ben-Chajim or Hayyim (for Daniel Bomberg), and Thomas Crenius the bibliographer. Each entry contains a list of the press corrector’s published writings, some of the famous books on which he worked and citations to source material. Felsecker’s typesetters here committed over 400 errors (five page errata in 68 pt. type)" (Bruce McKittrick Rare Books, Short Stack Seven [2009] no. 4).

Bigmore & Wyman, A Bibliography of Printing (1880) III: 113. The work was reissued in Nuremberg in 1720 under the following title: Theatrum virorum eruditorum qui speciatim typophraphiis laudabilem operam preaestiterunt.

Working in London, the painter Jacob Christoph le Blon secures a patent from George I for a process which he calls "printing paintings."

To prepare each of his three printing plates, Le Blon used the technique of mezzotint engraving: a copper sheet is uniformly roughened with the finely serrated edge of a burring tool, and local regions are then polished, to varying degrees, in order to control the amount of ink that they are to hold.

To develop his process Le Blon needed to find three colored inks of suitable transparency, and to analyze the color that was to be reproduced into its components. Sometimes he used a fourth plate, carrying black ink. This technique allowed the use of thinner layers of colored ink, reducing cost, and accelerating drying.

Much as fifteenth century printers viewed printing by moveable type as a less expensive way to reproduce texts that had previously been reproduced by manuscript copying, Jacob Christoph Le Blon viewed his process of color printing as a less expensive way of producing or reproducing color paintings.

In London Le Blon formed a company called The Picture Office to produce color prints. Ludwig Choulant stated that in 1721 Le Blon issued a separate print depicting the male sexual organs entitled Préparation anatomique des parties de l’homme, servants a la generation, faites sur les decouvertes les plus modernes. This print, which I have not seen, may be the first, or among the first, color-printed mezzotints ever published.

Choulant, History and Bibliography of Anatomic Illustration (1920) 265-66.

Printer and bookseller Martin-Dominique Fertel issues La Science pratique de l'imprimérie contenant des instructions très faciles pour se perfectionner dans cet art. On y trouvera une description de toutes les pieces dont une Presse est construire, avec le moyen de remedier à tous les défauts qui peuvent y s. from Saint-Omer, France.

This was the first manual on printing published in French, and the first book on book design in any language, though the author probably did not think of it as a design manual per se. The four parts of Fertel's work cover type and composition, imposition and press correction, accentuated letters and punctuation, and press work.  Fertel (1648-1752) had a shop in St. Omer from 1713 until his death in 1752. After becoming a printer in 1704 he travelled for about 10 years through France, Italy and Flanders. Not finding a printing manual anywhere, he decided to print his own.

English physician and scientist James Jurin publishes A Letter . . .Containing, a Comparison Between the Mortality of the Natural Small Pox and that Given by Inoculation.

In this work, which is one of the earliest applications of statistics to a particular socio-medical problem, Jurin proved statistically that the fatality of inocculated smallpox is very much less than the fatality of natural smalpox.

J. Norman (ed.) Morton's Medical Bibliography 5th ed (1991) no. 1689.

Having formed a company in London called The Picture Office in 1721 to produce color prints by his trichromatic method of color printing, Jacob Christophe le Blon privately published a pamphlet called Coloritto, describing the process that he had invented. This was the first published description of color printing.

The son of an organ maker, Basile Bouchon of Lyon adapted the concept of musical automata controlled by pegged cylinders to the repetitive task of weaving. He invented a loom that was controlled by perforated paper tape.

French Hugenot mathematician and demographer exiled in England, Abraham de Moivre publishes  Annuities upon Lives: Or, the Valuation of annuities upon any Number of lives; as also, of Reversions.

Using the mortality statistics gathered by Edmond Halley in the 1690s, Moivre formulated the theory of annuities, deriving his formulas from a postulated uniform rate of mortality and constant rates of interest on money.  "Here one finds the treatment of joint annuities on several lives, the inheritance of annuities, problems about the fair division of the costs of a tontine, and other contracts in which both age and interest on capital are relevant.  This mathematics became a standard part of all subsequent commercial applications in England" (Dictionary of Scientific Biography).

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 1530.

Count Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, Habsburg general, military engineer, scientist and virtuoso, publishes Histoire physique de la mer in Amsterdam.

This work, illustrated with an engraved frontispiece and 52 engraved plates, and a glowing introduction by physician  Herman Boerhaave, was the first book devoted entirely to marine science, and the first oceanographic study of a single region. Marsigli conducted an intensive investigation of the Gulf of Lyon in the south of France, taking soundings to obtain a profile of the sea floor, analyzing the relationship of the lands under and above water, studying the water's physical properties (temperature, density, color) and its motions (waves, currents, tides), and describing the marine life of the region. Marsigli was the first to give an account of formation of the continental shelf and slope, and the first to class corals as living beings rather than as inorganic mineral formations. His belief that the land and the sea bed formed a continuous structure was confirmed when he discovered rock strata dipping below sea level at the coast. Marsigli's work prefigured the systematic oceanographic exploration that would begin fifty years later with Captain James Cook's voyage in the Endeavor.

Deacon, Scientists and the Sea 1650-1900 (1971) 170-185. Stoye, Marsigli's Europe 1680-1730 (1994) 295-96. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 1445.

Austrian composer, music theorist and pedagogue Johann Joseph Fux publishes Gradus ad Parnassum, a treatise on counterpoint in the Palestrina style of Renaissance polyphony.

Fux divided Gradus ad Parnassum into two parts:

"In the first part, Fux presents a summary of the theory on Musica Speculativa, or the analysis of intervals as proportions between numbers. This section is in a simple lecture style, and looks at music from a purely mathematical angle, in a theoretical tradition that goes back, through the works of Renaissance theoreticians, to the Ancient Greeks. The words of Mersenne, Cicero and Aristotle are among the references quoted by Fux in this section.

"The second part, on Musica Pratica [or practical performance], is the section of this treatise where the author presents his instruction on counterpoint, fugue, double counterpoint, a brief essay on musical taste, and his ideas on composing Sacred music, writing in the Style A Cappella and in the Recitativo Style. This part is in the form of a dialog, between a master (Aloysius, Latin for Luigi, who is meant to represent Palestrina's ideas) and a student, Josephus, who represents Fux himself, a self-admitted admirer of Palestrina. At the outset Fux states his purpose: "to invent a simple method by which a student can progress, step by step, to the heights of compositional mastery..." and he gives his opinion of contemporary practice: "I will not be deterred by the most passionate haters of study, nor by the depravity of the present time." He also states that theory without practice is useless, thus his book stresses practice over theory" (Wikipedia article on Johann Fux, accessed 09-04-2010).

Leopold Mozart is said to have taught his son Wolfgang from Gradus ad Parnassum. JS Bach and Beethoven both held it in great esteem, and Haydn meticulously worked out each of its exercises.  Translated into the vernacular, Fux's work remains useful for the study of counterpoint. See The Study of Counterpoint from Johann Joseph Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum. Translated and edited by Alfred Mann (1943, 1965). (The paperback copy that I consulted was its 34th printing.)

In Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift describes a fictional device called The Engine, which generates permutations of word sets. It is possibly the earliest reference to a device resembling aspects of a modern computer.  Though Swift does not reference the medieval Ars combinatoria of the Spanish philosopher Ramon Llull (Lull),  the passage is considered a parody of his method.

Swift wrote:

“... Every one knew how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas, by his contrivance, the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study.” He then led me to the frame, about the sides, whereof all his pupils stood in ranks. It was twenty feet square, placed in the middle of the room. The superfices was composed of several bits of wood, about the bigness of a die, but some larger than others. They were all linked together by slender wires. These bits of wood were covered, on every square, with paper pasted on them; and on these papers were written all the words of their language, in their several moods, tenses, and declensions; but without any order. The professor then desired me “to observe; for he was going to set his engine at work.” The pupils, at his command, took each of them hold of an iron handle, whereof there were forty fixed round the edges of the frame; and giving them a sudden turn, the whole disposition of the words was entirely changed. He then commanded six-and-thirty of the lads, to read the several lines softly, as they appeared upon the frame; and where they found three or four words together that might make part of a sentence, they dictated to the four remaining boys, who were scribes. This work was repeated three or four times, and at every turn, the engine was so contrived, that the words shifted into new places, as the square bits of wood moved upside down."

With the support of the Grand Vizier, Ibrahim Muteferrika addresses a petition to the Sultan of Constantinople in the form of an essay entitled Wasilat al-Tiba'a, "The Utility of Printing."

Convinced by this essay of the value of printing, Sultan Ahmet III issued an edict permitting the establishment of printing presses in the Ottoman Empire. The authorities also ruled that only secular works could be printed. This edict protected the more than 4,000 professional manuscript copyists of Constantinople, whose work consisted almost entirely of copying the Qu'ran, the collections of canonical traditions, and legal texts.

In order to make the input of instructions to the loom more flexible Jean Falcon substitutes a chain of punched paper cards for the perforated paper tape employed by his colleague Basile Bouchon.

Two years after he received permission to print, Ibrahim Muteferrika founded the first printing press in Turkey, in his home at Constantinople. His first publication was an Arabic-Turkish vocabulary by Muhammed Ben Mustapha.

Mark Catesby publishes the Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands. 

This was the first natural history of North American flora and fauna, with 220 plates engraved by Catesby and colored under his supervision, systematically illustrating American birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects, and mammals for the first time. Catesby was the first to place his birds and animals in their natural habitats, a style of representation that would later be used by Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon. He was also the first to abandon the Native American names for his subjects, trying to establish scientific names based on generic relationships. Linnaeus would use Catesby’s work as the basis for his system of binomial nomenclature for American species in the tenth edition of Systema naturae (1758).

Having studied with the naturalist, John Ray, Catesby made his first trip to America to visit his sister who lived in Virginia. He returned to England in 1719. On this visit Catesby became intrigued with the strangeness and variety of American plants, birds and animals, and decided to return again to the New World for another extended trip. For this second visit he acquired a number of sponsors for whom he was to collect and sketch botanical samples. Amongst his sponsors were William Sherard and Sir Hans Sloane. Catesby returned to America in 1722, moving to Bermuda in 1725 as the guest of Governor Phenny. On this trip he collected  botanical samples for his sponsors, but he also sketched painted the birds, plants and animals that he saw on his wanderings throughout rural Southeastern America.

In 1726 Catesby returned to London and sought funding to produce and publish his researches by subscription.  “Catesby worked as a horticulturist first in the nursery of Thomas Fairchild, which passed to the hands Stephen Bacon in 1729, and then in Christopher Gray's nursery in Fulham. His work as a horticulturist and his reputation as an importer of exotic species helped him to generate subscribers for the Natural History as many of his clients read Catesby's work as an 'illustrated catalogue' of the exotic plants Catesby sold.

“Catesby's connections within the Royal Society proved indispensable in financing his American expedition, and they served him equally well in his publication of Natural History; Twenty-nine of his one hundred and fifty-four subscribers were members.Three individual members of the Royal Society were instrumental to producing and publishing the Natural History. Peter Collinson, a wealthy businessman with a keen interest in natural history, lent Catesby "considerable Sums of Money...without interest" and was the main financial supporter of Catesby's work. Sir Hans Sloane, by this time President of the Royal Society, continued to aid Catesby through his own financial support and by helping him enlist subscribers. For help with the Latin names of his subjects, Catesby turned to botanist William Sherard, who had been central in sending Catesby to America in the first place.

“Catesby wanted to send his watercolors to Paris or Amsterdam to be engraved for printing, but the cost was prohibitive. And so, by now in his mid-forties, the self-taught artist endeavored to learn etching. The print maker Joseph Goupy taught Catesby to etch his own plates. His lack of experience and expertise actually served as asset, freeing him to innovate. Instead of the traditional "Graver-like manner" he opted to ‘omit their method of cross-Hatching and to follow the humour of the Feathers, which is more laborious, and I hope has proved more to the purpose’. Each copy was then hand-coloured, though Catesby did have some assistance with this.

“As Catesby sorted through his paintings, deciding which to reproduce, he organized his materials into two volumes. The first hundred images of birds, frequently posed with the plants on which they feed or in which they dwell, would make up Volume I. Volume II was divided into sections treating fish, amphibians, mammals and insects, again, often with related plants. Volume II included plates treating only plants and ended with an appendix, which depicted some animals and plants Catesby was unable to see in person. As a preface to the second volume Catesby wrote a collection of essays discussing the geology, climate and peoples of "Carolina and the Bahama Islands."

“Each volume consists of five parts, each of which Catesby presented to the Royal Society upon completion. While the publication date on the title page of the first volume is 1731, he presented parts I-V between 1729 and 1732. Between 1734 and 1743 he presented parts VI-X, followed by the Appendix in 1747. Catesby sold the sections separately for two guineas a piece. A complete set, at twenty-two guineas, was one of the most expensive works of the 1700s. The order in which these sections of appear vary from copy to copy of the first edition as patrons had the works bound themselves. While Catesby's original proposal for publication stated that a smaller uncolored set would also be available for a single guinea a section, no known black and white copies exist” (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma02/amacker/etext/pre_3.htm, accessed 12-28-2008).

You may view all the images and captions from Catesby’s work at the website created by Kristy Amaker at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma02/amacker/etext/home.htm.

In 2007 The Catesby Commemorative Trust produced a beautiful film about Catesby's life and work entitled The Curious Mister Catesby which is available on DVD, and highly recommended. You can watch and listen to a snippet of the film and order it from their website.

Benajmin Franklin and a group of his friends seeking social, economic, intellectual and political advancement, form a discussion group called "the Junto." They establish the Library Company of Philadelphia as a subscription library.

Jacques Vaucanson begins construction his first automaton, or android— The Flute Player.

Vaucanson's Flute Player was most probably the first automaton to perform a series of mechanical procedures long enough and complex enough to provide a credible imitation of life. When finally completed seven years later, the automaton was "a life-size figure of a shepherd that played the tabor and the pipe and had a repertoire of twelve songs."

In 1738 Vaucanson presented The Flute Player at the Académie Royale des Sciences, and published a pamphlet in Paris entitled Le mécanisme du fluteur automate, presenté a messieurs de L'Académie Royale des Sciences. Avec la description d'un canard artificial, mangeant, beuvant, digerant & se vuidant, épluchantses aîles & ses plumes, imitant en div. maniers un canard vivant. . . .

English printer, editor, and publisher Edward Cave founds The Gentleman's Magazine: or, Trader's monthly intelligencer.

This was the first periodical to use the word magazine in the sense of storehouse of knowledge. With its title reduced to The Gentleman's Magazine, the work continued publication until 1907.

"Prior to the founding of The Gentleman's Magazine, there had been specialized journals, but no such wide-ranging publication (though there had been attempts, such as The Gentleman's Journal, which was edited by Peter Motteux and ran from 1692 to 1694).

"Samuel Johnson's first regular employment as a writer was with The Gentleman's Magazine. During a time when parliamentary reporting was banned, Johnson regularly contributed parliamentary reports as 'Debates of the Senate of Magna Lilliputia'. Though they reflected the positions of the participants, the words of the debates were mostly Johnson's own" (Wikipedia article on The Gentleman's Magazine, accessed 03-07-2009).

Physician Carl Linnaeus publishes in Stockholm, Sweden, his Systema naturae per regna tria naturae, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis or translated: "System of nature through the three kingdoms of nature, according to classes, orders, genera and species, with [generic] characters, [specific] differences, synonyms, places." 

Linnaeus issued this work as a series of large charts printed on both sides of seven sheets, or as a series of charts printed on one side only of twelve sheets. It was the first statement of the Linnean classification system.

Bernhard Siegfried Albinus of Leiden publishes Dissertatio de arteries et venis intestinorum hominis. Adjecta icon coloribus distincta containing a color mezzotint printed by the painter Jan Ladmiral.

This was among the earliest applications of color printing, and the first use of color printing in a medical or scientific book. Between 1736 and 1741 Albinus issued six pamphlets containing color mezzotints by Ladmiral , forming the first series of full-color anatomical color-printed illustrations ever made.  They are also the only color prints produced by Jan Ladmiral. Ladmiral had learned the process of color printing from the artist Jacob Christoph le Blon, the inventor of the process for printing color mezzotints using the three primary colors.

Choulant, History and Bibliography of Anatomic Illustration (1920)  265-66 for Le Blon, and 267-69 for Ladmiral.

Pierre-Simon Fournier le Jeune publishes Tables des Proportions des Differens Caracteres de l'imprimerie.

This work described Fourier's point-system, or typographic unit for the sizes of type—all multiples of a unit which he termed a "point typographique" based on a scale of 144 points. Fournier's point system underwent numerous revisions through the nineteenth century.

German bookseller Johann Adam Schmid issues from  Nuremberg the first "full-fledged" antiquarian bookseller's catalogue describing books which are significant, rare and desirable to collectors, with printed prices listed for each book:

Bibliotheca anonymiana, sive catalogus bibliotheca locupletis, Raritate, selectu, Ligatura Librorum splendidissimae. . . cum Notis literariis perpetuis aequissimoque Librorum pretio.

Breslauer & Folter, Bibliography: Its History and Development [1984] no. 99.

London rare book dealer and publisher Thomas Osborne issues The British Librarian: Exhibiting a Compenious Review or Abstract of our most Scarce, Useful and Valuable Books in all Sciences as well in Manuscript as in Print.

The work, of which only six issues appeared from January to June 1737 (issued in a collected volume in 1738), was the first periodical published in English on rare books and manuscripts, and it may be the first periodical on these topics in any language, as the antiquarian book trade was just beginning to become organized around this time, and the earliest recorded rare book catalogue is also dated 1738.

The anonymous author of the periodical, William Oldys, included descriptions of unique manuscripts, of examples of early printing such as several works printed by William Caxton, and of other works which were considered rare and collectable at the time. He sometimes includef details of bindings and of private collections. While Oldys' descriptions lean toward the verbose, and there is a certain lack of analysis, the periodical provides valuable insight into how rare books were appreciated and marketed in the first half of the eighteenth century. It is especially helpful since, as Oldys remarks, book sellers' catalogues and library catalogues of this period were primarily listings, and almost never annotated.

William Oldys devoted his life to antiquarian and bibliographic pursuits, compiling valuable notes on Langbaine's Dramatick Poets (1691), writing an important "Life" of Sir Walter Raleigh (published in the 1736 edition of Raleigh's History of the World), and amassing a library of historical and political works. In 1731 Oldys sold his library to Edward Harley (1689-1741), second Earl of Oxford and a noted bibliophile. From 1738 to 1741 Oldys served as the Earl's librarian, but had to give up the post upon his patron's death. In 1742 The Earl of Oxford's immense library of printed books was purchased by bookseller Thomas Osborne, publisher of The British Librarian and one of England's first rare book dealers. Osborne hired Oldys and Samuel Johnson to prepare a descriptive catalogue of the Harleian collection prior to its sale; the resulting Catalogus bibliothecae Harleianae was issued in five volumes between 1743 and 1745. Osborne and Oldys also worked together on The Harleian Miscellany, an annotated reprint of selected tracts and pamphlets from the Harleian library edited by Oldys and Johnson and published by Osborne. "Three years later Harley died, and from that time Oldys worked for the booksellers. His habits were irregular, and in 1751 his debts drove him to the Fleet prison. After two years' imprisonment he was released through the kindness of friends who paid his debts, and in April 1755 he was appointed Norfolk Herald Extraordinary and then Norroy King of Arms by the Duke of Norfolk" (Wikipedia article on William Oldys, which derives material from the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica).

Jacques Vaucanson completes his Canard digérateur or Digesting Duck, an automaton that imitates or simulates the process of eating kernels of grain, of metabolism, and of defecation.

This was the first automaton to simulate biological processes.

French scholar and Benedictine monk Bernard de Montfaucon publishes Bibliotheca Bibliothecarum Manuscriptorum nova. 

A catalogue of all the European manuscript collections with which Montfaucon was familiar,  this two-volume work was the first comprehensive catalogue of manuscript collections in Europe, and one of the first attempts at a continent-wide union catalogue.

Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man (1967) no. 175, note.

Christoph Ernst Prediger publishes in 4 volumes, each extensively illustrated, Der in aller heut zu Tag üblichen Arbeit wohl anweisende accurate Buchbinder und Futteralmach welcher lehret, Wie nicht nur ein Buch auf das nettest zu verfertigen, sonder auch wie solcher sein gebührende Dauer hält . . .

"Vol. 1 is an exhaustive manual of bookbinding and box-making, with tables showing the cost of materials, the time taken over the various processes and the cost of different styles of binding. The other three volumes deal with more specialised work such as the binding of school books, and there is inevitably a good deal of repetition. Volume III has an appendix on apprenticeship regulations" (Pollard, Early Bookbinding Manuals [1984] no. 22).

Benjamin Franklin was the first to conceive the idea of publishing a magazine in the American colonies.  However, Andrew Bradford's American Magazine, or Monthly View of the Political State of the British Colonies, beat Franklin to press by three days. Franklin's publication was called The General Magazine, and Historical Chronicle for all the British Plantations in America. Bradford's magazine continued publication for three months; Franklin's for six months.

German army chaplain, statistician and demographer Johann Peter Süssmilch publishes Die göttliche Ordnung in den Veränderungen des menschlichen Geschlechts. In this work he showed the necessity of a healthy and industrious population for the survival of a nation.

J. Norman (ed.) Morton's Medical Bibliography 5th ed. (1991) No. 1691.

English writer, actress and publisher Eliza Haywood writes The Female Spectator. This monthly periodical, written in answer to the contemporary journal, The Spectator by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, is the first periodical written for women by a woman.

"Haywood anonymously published a monthly journal entitled The Female Spectator. It was the first magazine by and for women, and was extremely popular. It was a collection of essays that allegedly originate in letters from readers. The essays provide an ideal forum of disscussion which gave Haywood direct contact to her public and vise versa. Haywood concerned herself with how women might operate better in a society that held restrictions upon them. She knew the difficulties of female life within a patriarchal system, but she wrote to show how not to accept such difficulties as definitive of women's possibilities. Haywood's explicit recommendations  [were] to women urge them to work within the existing system, gain an education, and a strong sense of personal power.

"As Haywood began finding her authoral voice, she created the magazine as a product of four women. She created those women as voices that would relate to the public and help her reach her moral purpose of the magazine. First, was Mira, a lady descended from a family to which "wit" was hereditary . . . . She married a gentleman that was ever so deserving of a great wife, and together, they live in perfect harmony. Next, is a widow of quality, who is able to find innocence and honour in most situations. She was called the wise widow . . . . The third was the daughter of a wealthy merchant, charming, but endued with so many accomplishments, that to those who know her truly, her beauty is the least distinguished part of her . . . . The fourth was the "Female Spectator" herself . . . . Within the pages of The Female Spectator, gambling, lying, jilting, scandal bearing, and the like are discussed as they affect women. Current affairs, wars, and politics, were not a part of the magazine. Naturally, the focus was on women and their concerns, principally courtship and marriage" (http://www.umich.edu/~ece/student_projects/female_journalism/femalespectator.htm accessed 02-23-2009).

French mathematician and statistician Antoine Deparcieux publishes Essai sur les probabilités de la durée de la vie humaine.  He published a supplement to this work entitled Addition à l'Essai sur les probabilités de la durée de la vie humaine in 1760.

These works on annuities and mortality were the first correct "life tables."

Dutch physician and anatomist Bernhard Siegfried Albinus publishes Tabulae sceleti et musculorum corporis humani in Leiden at the printing office of Johan & Hermann Verbeek.

The plates in this large folio work are unsurpassed for their cool, elegant aesthetic and scientific accuracy. They were drawn and engraved by Jan Wandelaar, a pupil of the engravers Jacob Fokema and Guillem van der Gouwen, and the painter Gérard de Lairesse, who prepared the drawings for Govert Bidloo's atlas (referenced in this database). Prior to working for Albinus, Wandelaar worked for anatomist Friedrik Ruysch. Albinus, however, provided Wandelaar with the opportunity for the full expression of his talents as a draftsman and engraver. For many years Wandelaar worked nearly exclusively for Albinus, and lived in Albinus' house, illustrating the long series of superb books which Albinus produced. Choulant states that when Wandelaar died Albinus fell into a severe depression, from which he only gradually recovered. The Tables of the Skeleton and Muscles of the Human Body represents the apogee of an exceptional collaboration between physician and artist which lasted from 1721 until the artist's death in 1754, and resulted in a series of unsurpassed publications.

Roberts and Tomlinson described the innovative method that Wandelaar and Albinus devised for the transfer of the most accurate and proportional images of the anatomy to the drawings, using two nets, or grids, of small cords. The first plates are finished representations of the skeleton and are each accompanied by an outline-plate of the same size. The following 9 plates represent complete finished musclemen, each with an additional outline plate. The 14 plates following these represent special muscles and parts of muscles. Each of the very numerous figures on these last 14 plates is supplied with an outline-drawing unless the letters are engraved directly upon the finished figures. There are a total of 40 plates.

The 3 finished plates of the skeleton and the 9 finished muscle men are some of the most beautiful plates in the history of engraving. Wandelaer placed each figure in a carefully chosen landscape setting, and the artistic results are so pleasantly successful that the anatomical figures, although composed of many separate parts, appear to be actually stepping out of the picture.

Choulant, History and Bibliography of Anatomic Illustration (1920) 276-83. Roberts & Tomlinson, The Fabric of the Human Body (1992) 320-339. J. Norman (ed) Morton's Medical Bibliography (1991) No. 399. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) No. 29. Sappol, Dream Anatomy (2006) 118-19.

English writer on cookery, Hannah Glasse publishes The Art of Cookery. This work became one of the most widely read cookbooks in England and America for about 100 years.

"Hannah wrote mostly for domestic servants (the "lower sort", as she referred to them), writing in a conversational style familiar to anyone who has learned a recipe at the elbow of a parent or grandparent. The food is surprisingly recognizable, with staples such as Yorkshire pudding and gooseberry fool still known and eaten today, and there are even early traces of the Indian food that eventually became naturalized in the UK. She showed marked disapproval of French cooking styles and in general avoided French culinary terminology" (Wikipedia article on The Art of Cookery, accessed 06-07-2009).

"By the time Hannah Glasse published her first cookery book in 1747 the urban middle classes were almost universally literate and had cash to burn. They were also acutely aware that fortunes were easier to earn than respectability and social status. Prosperous merchants, lawyers, shopkeepers and tradesmen were desperate in the mid-18th Century to show off their new wealth and to establish themselves within society. Hannah Glasse gave them the ticket to social respectability by providing middle class women with a no-nonsense cookery books that gave them the ticket out of the kitchen and into a life of leisure. Even if the women of London’s burgeoning mercantile class could not quite replicate the life of leisure led by the gentry and nobility, they were now about to eat in the style of those much higher up the social scale. Hannah was providing a guide to life.

"Between 1700 and 1789 over 500,000 copies of some 300 cookery books were published. The vogue for complicated books published by men was completely overtaken by the simple approach pioneered by Glasse and many female contemporaries. The success of the Art of Cookery is testament not only to the aspirational desires of the middle classes and the increased purchasing power of women, but also to the fact that a much wider spectrum of British society was beginning to enjoy eating. Discarding the extravagance and pomp of court food and French culinary techniques saw British cooking get back to basics – good ingredients, simple techniques, and quality dining available for all" (Wikipedia article on Hannah Glass, accessed 06-07-2009).

René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur and Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau issue Descriptions des arts et métiers faites ou approuvées par Messieurs de l'Académie Royale des Sciences, containing 72 works in 114 parts printed in folio format, with over 2100 engraved plates and plans.

This was the most important and the largest work on the mechanical and industrial arts of the eighteenth century in France, and one of the earliest such projects to be undertaken in any country. Although encyclopedic in scope, the work was not conceived in parallel to Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, but in response to the perceived function of the Académie Royale des Sciences. A statement was published in 1699 in Histoire, an organ of the Académie, that outlined the motives and aims behind a proposed Description des arts et métiers:

“When this work is completed, it will be easy for each craft to compare the practices in vogue in France with those pursued in other countries; and from this comparison, the French and the inhabitants of these foreign lands will profit equally” (quoted in Cole and Watts, p. 7).

Each article had sections on materials, tools and apparatus, processes and methods, and illustrations of the métier. The wide range of crafts and industries covered nearly every aspect of French industrial and artisan life: coal-mining, fishing, textile manufacture, carpentry and cabinet-making, masonry, glass-blowing, ceramics, candle- and soap-making, barbering and wig-making, papermaking and bookbinding, iron- and tinsmithing, among other fields. Although the work was very much a separate enterprise, the Arts et métiers inspired many articles in the Encyclopédie, and can be said to complement the latter work. Both were essential to any well-balanced library in France and abroad.

The two principal figures involved in the Arts et métiers were René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur  and Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau. The former was elected to the Académie at age 25, and had a prodigious output, submitting memoir after memoir on a variety of subjects, mostly relating to pure mathematics and pure science, but including his celebrated description of English steel production. Duhamel de Monceau, who succeeded Réaumur, was interested in applied sciences, in particular chemistry, botany and mechanics. Réaumur died before the first cahier of the Arts et métiers appeared, and Duhamel du Monceau assumed control of the project some time after Réaumur’s death in 1757. Other contributors included François Bedos de Celles (1706-79), Fredrik Chapman (d. 1808)., Charles Romme (1744-1805), Michel Ferdinand d’Albert d’Ailly, duc de Chaulnes (1714-69), the Abbé Jean-Antoine Nollet (1700-1770), Jean-Jacques Perret (1730-84), Charles-René Fourcroy de Ramecourt (1715-91), August-Denis Fougeroux de Bondaroy (1732-89), François-Alexandre Pierre de Garcault (fl. 2nd half of the 18th cent.), Jérome le Français de Lalande (1732-1807), Jean Jacques Paulet (1740-1826), Jeanne-Marie Roland de la Platière (1734-93), Nicolas Christien de Thy, comte de Milly (1728-84) and others. The Académie and the authors of the Arts et métiers sought help from men with practical experience whenever possible.

The combination of the best scientific minds and the best practical minds of the era produced an invaluable reference work and an unparalleled social record of the artisan classes, and recorded for posterity manufacturing methods that would soon disappear with the coming of the Industrial Revolution. Like Diderot’s Encyclopédie, the Arts et métiers is one of the greatest productions of the French Enlightenment, and a benchmark in social and scientific history.

 Arthur H. Cole and George B. Watts, The Handicrafts of France as Recorded in the Description des Arts et Métiers (1952).