From Cave Paintings to the Internet A Chronological and Thematic Database on the History of Information and Media 1650 to 1700 Timeline

Scottish minister and writer, John Dury, Keeper of the Royal Library from the death of Charles I until the Restoration, publishes The Reformed Librarie Keeper, the first English book on “library economy.”

The sliding-stick form of the slide rule is developed.

The library of diarist Samuel Pepys is one of the most significant private libraries preserved intact from seventeenth century England. At Pepys's death in 1703 it included more than 3,000 volumes, including his diary, kept from 1600-1669, all carefully catalogued and indexed. Preserved at Magdalene College, Cambridge, the library, most of which Pepys collected during the last thirteen years of his life, is arranged by size, from No. 1 (the smallest) to No. 3,000 (the largest), and housed in the original twelve seventeenth-century oak bookcases just as Pepys arranged it.  A peculiarity of Pepys's arrangement was that he wanted each book on each shelf to be the same height, and when any book was shorter than the others he had a wooden base made for it, the visible portion of which was rounded and covered in tooled leather to resemble the spine of the book which would sit on it. Pepys's bookcases, also called presses, are among the earliest surviving examples of bookcases in the modern sense. The fine bindings on the books, mostly done for Pepys, are also significant.

Among the most famous items in the Library are the original bound manuscripts of Pepys's diary, and Pepys's copy of the first edition of Newton's Principia (1687), published under Pepys's imprimatur as President of the Royal Society. The library also includes remarkable holdings of incunabula, manuscripts, and printed ballads.

"Most of his [Pepys's] leisure he now spent on his library. He intensified his search for books and prints, setting himself a target of 3000 volumes. Pepys and his library clerk devised a great three-volume catalogue; collated Pepysian copies with those in other collections; adorned volume upon volume with exquisite title pages written calligraphically by assistants; pasted prints into their guard-books; and inserted indexes and lists of contents" (http://www.magd.cam.ac.uk/pepys/latham.html, accessed 12-24-2008).

Pepys made detailed provisions in his will for the preservation of his book collection. When his nephew and heir, John Jackson, died in 1723, it was transferred intact to the Pepys Library, kept in the Pepys Building on the grounds of Magdalene College.

Hobson, Great Libraries (1970) 212-221.

François Pierre de la Varenne, chef de cuisine to Nicolas Chalon du Blé, marquis d'Uxelles, publishes Le cuisinier françois, the founding text of modern French cuisine.

Le cuisinier françois played a major role in moving French gastronomy away from the heavily spiced cuisine of the Middle Ages toward recipes that expressed the natural flavors of foods.

"Exotic spices (saffron, cinnamon, cumin, ginger, nutmeg, cardamom, nigella, seeds of paradise) were, with the exception of pepper, replaced by local herbs (parsley, thyme, bayleaf, chervil, sage, tarragon). New vegetables like cauliflower, asparagus, peas, cucumber and artichoke were introduced. Special care was given to the cooking of meat in order to conserve maximum flavour. Vegetables had to be fresh and tender. Fish, with the improvement of transportation, had to be impeccably fresh. Preparation had to respect the gustatory and visual integrity of the ingredients instead of masking them as had been the practice previously.

"La Varenne's work was the first to set down in writing the considerable culinary innovations achieved in France in the seventeenth century, while codifying food preparation in a systematic manner, according to rules and principals. He introduced the first bisque and Béchamel sauce. He replaced crumbled bread with roux as the base for sauces, and lard with butter. Here one finds the first usage of the terms bouquet garni, fonds de cuisine (stocks) and reductions, and the use of egg-whites for clarification. It also contains the earliest recipe in print for mille-feuille. The cooking of vegetables is addressed, an unusual departure. In a fragrant sauce for asparagus there is evidence of an early form of hollandaise sauce:

"make a sauce with good fresh butter, a little vinegar, salt, and nutmeg, and an egg yolk to bind the sauce; take care that it doesn't curdle..." 

"La Varenne preceded his book with a text on confitures—jams, jellies and preserves— that included recipes for syrups, compotes and a great variety of fruit drinks, as well as a section on salads (1650).

"La Varenne followed his groundbreaking work with a third book, Le Pâtissier françois (Paris 1653), which is generally credited with being the first comprehensive French work on pastry-making. In 1662 appeared the first of the combined editions that presented all three works together. All the early editions of La Varenne's works—Le Cuisinier françois ran through some thirty editions in seventy-five years—are extremely rare; like children's books, they too were worn to pieces, in the kitchen, and simply used up."

"The English translation, The French Cook (London 1653) was the first French cookbook translated into English. It introduced professional terms like à la mode, au bleu (very rare), and au naturel which are now standard culinary expressions. Its success can be gauged from the fact that over 250,000 copies were printed in about 250 editions and it remained in print until 1815" (Wikipedia article on François Pierre La Varenne, accessed 06-07-2009).

Chetham’s Library in Manchester, England, founded on this date, claims to be “the earliest public library in the English speaking world.”

David Teniers the Younger issues the Theatrum Pictorium, a catalogue of 243 Italian paintings belonging to his patron, Hapsburg Archduke Leopold Wilhelm.

Containing the engraved reproductions of 243 paintings, this was the first published illustrated catalogue of an art collection.

Physician and alchemist, Johann Joachim Becher, publishes Character, pro notitia linguarum universali  in Frankfurt. This proposal for a universal language in numeric form may, to some extent, anticipate the idea of machine translation.

“Becher constructed a Latin dictionary that was almost ten times more vast (10,000 items). [...] For each item in Becher’s dictionary there is an Arabic number: the city of Zurich, for example, is designated by the number 10283. A second Arabic number refers the user to grammatical tables which supply verbal endings, the endings for the comparative and superlative forms of adjectives, or adverbial endings. A third number refers to case endings. The dedication 'Inventum Eminentissimo Principi' is written 4442. 2770:169:3. 6753:3, that is, '(My) Invention (to the) Eminent + superlative + dative singular, Prince + dative singular'. Unfortunately Becher was afraid that his system might prove difficult for peoples who did not know the Arabic numbers; he therefore thought up a system of his own for the direct visual representation of numbers. The system is atrociously complicated and almost totally illegible. [However, together with Gaspar Schott’s Technica curiosa (1664), Becher’s system has been seen] as tentative models for future practices of computer translation. In fact, it is sufficient to think of Becher’s pseudo-ideograms as instructions for electronic circuits, prescribing to a machine which path to follow through the memory in order to retrieve a given linguistic term, and we have a procedure for a word-for-word translation (with all the obvious inconveniences of such a merely mechanical program)’ (Umberto Eco, The Search for the Perfect Language, pp. 201–3).”  See Bernard Quaritch Ltd., Logic and Language [PDF] Autumn 2008, number 1.

English gardiner, diarist and environmentalist John Evelyn publishes Fumifugium: or the Inconveniencie of the Aer and Smoak of London Dissipated.

Fumifugium was a pioneering attack on air polution caused by the "hellish and dismall cloud of sea-coal" which perpetually enveloped London at the time. Of course, the problem Evelyn wrote about did not dissipate, and the work continued to be reprinted, with at least four editions published in the 20th century, including one in 1961 by the National Society for Clean Air.

English puritan clergyman and missionary in Roxbury, Massachusetts John Eliot, and printers Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson in Cambridge, Massachusetts issue The Holy Bible: Containing the Old Testament and the New, Translated into the Indian Language. 

This was the first complete edition of the bible published in the Western Hemisphere, and “the earliest example in history of the translation and printing of the entire Bible in a new language as a means of evangelization” (Darlow and Moule).

On July 27, 1649, the British Parliament enacted an "Ordinance for the Advancement of Civilization and Christianity Among the Indians." This act created The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, the first Protestant missionary society. Also in 1649 Eliot made the decision to attempt the translation of the Scriptures into the Algonquin language. Like other native American languages, Alogonquin had no written form, and it was considered one of the world's most difficult languages. The process of translation of the bible into the Natick dialect of the region's Algonquin tribes took Eliot ten years,  with the assistance of John Sassamon, a member of the local tribe, whose ability to speak and write English proved invaluable.

“When the manuscript was ready for publication, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England not only provided the funds to print it, but they also sent an English printer by the name of Marmaduke Johnson, a printing press, and a supply of paper. Johnson arrived in the New World and set to work with Samuel Green who had already started to print the New Testament. By 1661 they had completed the printing of fifteen hundred copies of the New Testament. One thousand of the New Testaments were reserved for binding with the Old Testament, when completed, to form an entire Bible. The remaining copies of the New Testament were distributed among the Algonquin tribe or sent to England as presentation copies.

"When the task of printing the New Testament was complete, Green and Johnson began printing one thousand copies of the Old Testament, which included a translation of the Metrical Psalms. The work proceeded quickly and by 1663 the printing was finished. The Old Testaments were bound with the reserved copies of the New Testament to produce one thousand copies of the entire Bible” (Samworth, John Eliot and America's First Bible, accessed 12-30-2008).

John Graunt, a draper in London, publishes Natural and Political Observations Mentioned in a Following Index, and Made upon the Bills of Mortality.

Basing his work primarily on London's weekly Bills of Mortality, which had been published since 1593, Graunt noted the regularity of certain vital phenomena, such as higher death rates for children under six years of age, constructed the first life expectancy tables, and attempted to use his data to describe various characteristics of populations.

Graunt was well aware of the limitations of his data, however, citing such defects as lack of thoroughness, inadequate disease vocabulary, and dishonest reporting of deaths from certain causes such as syphilis.  His work first established the uniformity and predictability of many important biological phenomena when taken in large numbers, such as the greater number of female babies, the longer lifespans of females, the high mortality among infants.

It has long been debated how much Graunt's friend, the economist William Petty, contributed to the Observations; recent opinion has it that most of the work is Graunt's, although Petty may have made a few contributions. 

Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man (1967) no. 144.   Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 933.

Germans in Nuremberg attempt to work around the English monopoly on  solid graphite for pencils by trying to manufacture graphite sticks from powdered graphite, sulphur, and antimony.

René Descartes publishes De homine figuris. . .  in Leiden. He had written the manuscript in French, originally intending it to accompany his Discours sur la méthode (1637) but suppressed it after the condemnation of Galileo in 1633, fearing that his mechanistic view of the human body might be considered heretical. The physician Florentius Schuyl translated Descartes' text into Latin. The edition included 10 engraved plates, including a "dissected" plate of the heart with the interior parts shown by means of lift-up flaps, plus engraved and woodcut text illustrations. Two years later the book first appeared in French in an edition published in Paris, with different illustrations.

This work was the first attempt to cover the whole field of "animal physiology."  It was based upon Descartes's concept of "l'homme machine," an automaton constructed by God to approximate real men as closely as possible.  By using this literary device Descartes was able to avoid the restrictions and encumbrances of traditional physiology and theology, and to explain all physical motions, except for deliberately wilful, rational or self-conscious behavior, in purely mechanical terms. The work is particularly noteworthy for containing "the first descriptive statement of involuntary action which bears a recognizable resemblance to the modern concept of reflex action." Descartes had first used the word "reflex" in a neurophysiological sense in Les passions de l'âme (1649). 

J. Norman (ed.) Morton's Medical Bibliography (1991) no. 574. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 627.

English diarist, gardener, and ecologist John Evelyn issues from London Sculptura: or the History and Art of Chalcography and Engraving in Copper. . . .

This was the first book on mezzotint. Its frontispiece was a mezzotint by soldier, inventor, and amateur printmaker, Prince Rupert, Count Palatine of the Rhine and Duke of Bavaria, from whom Evelyn learned about the mezzotint process. Prince Rupert's print, after Jusepe de Ribera, is known as Head of the Executioner, or The Little Executioner, or The Small Executioner.

Wax, The Mezzotint: History and Technique (1990) 21-22.

English writer, gardiner, and diarist, John Evelyn publishes Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest-Trees, and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesty's Dominions. .  . .To Which is Annexed Pomona, or an Appendix Concerning Fruit-Trees. . .also Kalendarium Hortense; or Gardeners' Almanac. . . .

Sylva was a protest against the destruction of England's forests being carried out by her glass factories and iron furnaces. The work was influential in establishing a much-needed program of reforestation in order to provide timber for Britain's burgeoning navy. This program had a lasting effect on the British economy.

Sylva also bears the distinction of being the first official publication of the Royal Society, which had been permitted to publish in 1662.  The first edition contained two appendixes, "Pomona" and "Kalendarium Hortense"; the second of these was often reprinted separately, and proved to be Evelyn's most popular work.

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 745.

French Jesuit geographer, historian, and bibliographer Philippe Labbé issues Bibliotheca bibliothecarum curis secundis auctior accedit Bibliotheca Nummaria. This is the earliest bibliography of bibliographies.

"It is basically an alphabetical list, arranged by authors' first names, followed by eight intricate subject indices, among them one of publishers' and booksellers' catalogues. Appended is a very useful numismatic bibliography" (Breslauer & Folter, Bibliography: Its History and Development [1984] no. 62).

Robert Hooke publishes Micrographia: Or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses in London. This was the first book devoted entirely to microscopical observations, and also the first book to pair its microscopic descriptions with profuse and detailed illustrations. This graphic portrayal of the hitherto unknown microcosm had an impact rivalling that of Galileo's Sidereus nuncius (1610), which was the first book to include images of the macrocosm shown through the telescope. It was also the second book published under the auspices of the Royal Society of London.

Hooke began his observations with studies of non-living materials, such as woven cloth and frozen urine crystals, then proceeded to investigations of plant and animal life.  He published the first studies of insect anatomy, giving a lucid account of the compound eye of the fly, and illustrating the microscopic details of such structures as apian wings, flies' legs and feet, and the sting of the bee.  His famous and dramatic portraits of the flea and louse, a frightening eighteen inches long, are hardly less startling today than they must have been to Hooke's contemporaries.  His botanical observations include the first description of the plant-like form of molds, and of the honeycomb-like structure of cork, which last he described as being composed of "cellulae"— thereby coining the modern biological usage of the work "cell" to describe the basic microscopic units of tissue.

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 1092.

French writer Denis de Sallo, Sieur de la Coudraye (pseudonym Sieur d'Hédonville) publishes the first issue of the first French literary and scientific journal, Journal des sçavans.

This was the earliest scientific journal published in Europe, predating Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London by three months.

"The journal ceased publication in 1792, during the French Revolution, and although it very briefly reappeared in 1797 under the updated title Journal des savants, it did not re-commence regular publication until 1816. From then on, the Journal des savants became more of a literary journal, and ceased to carry significant scientific material" (Wikipedia article on Journal des sçavans, accessed 07-31-2009).

The Journal des sçavans is available online in the Bibliothèque nationale de France Gallica digital library at this link: http://gallica.bnf.fr/Search?ArianeWireIndex=index&q=journal+des+scavans&p=1⟨=en.

Philosophical Transactions: Giving some Accompt of the Present Undertakings, Studies, and Labours of the Ingenious in Many Considerable Parts of the World begins publication in London by the Royal Society.

Philosophical Transactions is the oldest continuously published journal of an academy of science.

On 1 March 1664/5, two years after the granting of its charter, the Royal Society authorized its second secretary, Henry Oldenburg, to publish at his own expense a monthly collection of scientific papers communicated to him either by members of the society or by foreign scientists. Although it was not the earliest scientific periodical, as  Journal des sçavans antedated it by three months,  Philosophical Transactions, with its long papers, book reviews and notices of work in progress, became the primary means of communication between English and Continental scientists, and served as a model for later periodicals issued by scientific academies.

"The first volumes of what is now the world's oldest scientific journal in continuous publication were very different from today's journal, but in essence it served the same function; namely to inform the Fellows of the Society and other interested readers of the latest scientific discoveries. As such, Philosophical Transactions established the important principles of scientific priority and peer review, which have become the central foundations of scientific journals ever since. In 1886, the breadth and scope of scientific discovery had increased to such an extent that it became necessary to divide the journal into two, Philosophical Transactions A and B, covering the physical sciences and the life sciences respectively" (http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/, where all issues of Philosophical Transactions are available online)

Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man (1967) no. 148.

Between April 1665 and September 1666 plague kills 75,000 to 100,000 people, up to a fifth of London's population. "The disease was historically identified as bubonic plague, an infection by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, transmitted through a flea vector. The 1665-1666 epidemic was on a far smaller scale than the earlier "Black Death" pandemic, a virulent outbreak of disease in Europe between 1347 and 1353. The Bubonic Plague was only remembered afterwards as the "great" plague because it was one of the last widespread outbreaks in England.

"At the time, the outbreak was blamed upon the French. In early April 1665, two infected French sailors were said to have collapsed and died at the junction of Drury Lane and Long Acre in London. These cases were said to have brought about all subsequent infections. This theory has been largely dismissed as anti-French propaganda. The British outbreak is actually thought to have originated from the Netherlands, where the bubonic plague had occurred intermittently since 1599, with the initial contagion arriving with Dutch trading ships carrying bales of cotton from Amsterdam. The dock areas outside of London, including the parish of St. Giles-in-the Fields where poor workers crowded into ill-kept structures, were the first areas struck by the plague. Personal and public hygiene was very minimal during this period, contributing to the spread of disease. During the winter of 1664-1665, there were reports of several deaths. However, the very cold winter seemingly controlled the contagion. But spring and summer months were unusually warm and sunny, and the plague spread rapidly. As records were not kept on the deaths of the very poor, the first recorded case was a Rebecca Andrews, on April 12, 1665" (Wikipedia article on Great Plague of London, accessed 01-03-2009).

Michel de Marolles publishes Catalogue de livres d’estampes et de figures en taille douce.

Marolles's work was the first book on print collecting. Marolles arranged his collection of 123,400 engravings into schools, and in his preliminary and concluding essays he illuminated market conditions and the methods and tastes of fellow collectors. He also documented the relative weighting, in acquisition decisions, of physical condition, rarity, provenance, artist, engraver and the beauty of the image. As a result of this book Louis XIV's finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, purchased Marolles' print collection, and it became the basis of the Cabinét des Estampes at the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Jean Talon, the first Intendant of New France, conducts the first census of New France (Canada). Talon conducted the census largely by himself, travelling door-to-door among the settlements of New France. He did not include Native American inhabitants of the colony, or the religious orders. This was the first census conducted in North America.

"According to Talon's census there were 3215 people in New France, and 538 separate families. There were 2034 men and 1181 women. Children and unmarried people were grouped together; there were 2154 of these, while only 1019 people were married (42 were widowed). 547 people lived in Quebec, 455 in Trois-Rivières, and 625 in Montreal. The largest single age group, 21-30 year olds, numbered 842. 763 people were professionals of some kind, and 401 of these were servants, while 16 were listed as 'gentlemen of means.' "

Joachim Johann Mader publishes De bibliothecis atque archivis virorum clarissimorum libelli et commentationes. Cum praefatione  de scriptis et bibliothecis antediluvianis. This was the first anthology of texts on libraries, archives and "library science".

"The work is prefaced by his account of antediluvian libraries—those of Adam, Noah, etc., and then follow several monographs from such authors as Justus Lipsius, Franz Schott, Fulvio Orsino, Michael Neander, and pieces on the Vatican and Escorial libraries"  (Catalogus Catalogorum [Predominantly Post-1900]. Part III of the Private Library of Hans P. Kraus. Catalogue 190, H. P. Kraus [company,] no. 538).

The Great Fire of London sweeps through the central parts of the city.

"The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman City Wall. It threatened, but did not reach, the aristocratic district of Westminster (the modern West End), Charles II's Palace of Whitehall, and most of the suburban slums. It consumed 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches, St. Paul's Cathedral, and most of the buildings of the City authorities. It is estimated that it destroyed the homes of 70,000 of the City's ca. 80,000 inhabitants. The death toll from the fire is unknown and is traditionally thought to have been small, as only six verified deaths were recorded. This reasoning has recently been challenged on the grounds that the deaths of poor and middle-class people were not recorded anywhere, and that the heat of the fire may have cremated many victims, leaving no recognizable remains."

"The social and economic problems created by the disaster were overwhelming; significant scapegoating occurred for some time after the fire. Evacuation from London and resettlement elsewhere were strongly encouraged by Charles II, who feared a London rebellion amongst the dispossessed refugees. Despite numerous radical proposals, London was reconstructed on essentially the same street plan used before the fire" (Wikipedia article on Great Fire of London, accessed 06-11-2009).

Samuel Green, using a press in Cambridge, Massachusetts owned by the president of Harvard, Henry Dunster, prints the first medical or biological publication in North America--an edition of a London plague tract. The title is: Thomas Vincent's Gods Terrible Voice in the City of London wherein you have the Narration of the Two Late Dreadful Judgements of Plague and Fire, Inflicted by the Lord upon that City; the former in the year 1665. The latter in the year 1666. By T.V. To which is Added, the Generall Bill of Mortality, shewing the Number of Persons which Died in Every Parish of all Diseases, and of the Plague, in the Year Abovesaid. This is known from a single copy preserved at Harvard University. It is also probably the first North American publication on any scientific subject.

The pamphlet was reissued in 1668 by another Cambridge, Masschusetts printer, Marmaduke Johnson. This 31 page pamphlet is known from a single copy preserved in the American Antiquarian Society.

Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary:

"So took up my wife and home, there I to the office, and thence with Sympson, the joyner home to put together the press he hath brought me for my books this day, which pleases me exceedingly."

and a few days later he wrote:

"and then comes Sympson to set up my other new presses for my books, and so he and I fell into the furnishing of my new closett ... so I think it will be as noble a closett as any man hath."

"The surviving bookcases have paired glazed doors each in 21 small panes, over a low section, also with glazed panes, made to hold large folio volumes. The door of the lower section slide to the side like a sash window, probably Pepys' own invention. The base moldings and cornices are finely and robustly carved with acanthus leaf. Such tall bookcases with doors glazed like paned windows, were a contemporary innovation, but Pepys was alert and curious and well-connected in London, and there is no reason to think his "book-presses" were the very first with glass-paned doors. Pepys began with three or four and kept adding to them until he had twelve" (Wikipedia article on Sympson the joyner, accessed 02-18-2009).

Wormald & Wright, The English Library before 1700 (1958) illustrate as plate 2 a drawing preserved in the Pepysian Library showing how the bookcases were originally arranged in Pepys' house in York Buildings before they were moved to to Magdalene College.

Gaspard Schott's posthumous Organum Mathematicum is published, in which he describes his “mathematical organ,” and his calculating machine based on Napier’s rods.

John Wilkins publishes in London An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language in which he attempts to create a universal language to replace Latin  by which scholars and philosophers can communicate.

By "real character" Wilkins meant a new orthography for the English language that resembled shorthand.  His "philosophical language" was based on an early classification scheme or ontology. "Wilkins proposed a method of encoding words so that every concept would have a unique 'non-arbitrary' name. All concepts are divided into forty main Genuses, each of which gives the first, two-letter syllable of the word; a Genus is divided into Differences, each of which adds another letter; and Differences are divided into Species, which add a fourth letter. For instance, Zi identifies the Genus of “beasts” (mammals); Zit gives the Difference of “rapacious beasts of the dog kind”; Zitα gives the Species of dogs. (Sometimes the first letter indicates a supercategory— e.g. Z always indicates an animal— but this does not always hold.)

"The resulting words thus encode some of the semantics of their meanings into their spelling. Such a priori languages were inspired by accounts of how the Chinese writing system worked.

"Jorge Luis Borges wrote a critique of Wilkins' philosophical language in his essay El idioma analítico de John Wilkins (The Analytical Language of John Wilkins). He compares Wilkins’ classification to the fictitious Chinese encyclopedia Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, expressing doubts about all attempts at a universal classification. Modern information theory also suggests that it is a bad idea to have words with similar but distinct meanings also sound similar, because mishearings and the resulting confusion would be much more prominent than in real-world languages. In The Search for the Perfect Language, Umberto Eco catches Wilkins himself making this kind of mistake in his text, using Gαde (barley) instead of Gαpe (tulip)" (Wikipedia article on An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language, accessed 11-28-2008).

As a result of the burning of his home and the destruction of his library, which included numerous unpublished manuscripts on a wide range of subjects, Danish physician and anatomist, Thomas Bartholin, publishes De bibliothecae incendio, a work of self-consolation. In this work Bartholin recounts examples in history of other library losses through fire, and catalogs and summarizes the vast amount of his intellectual work that was "lost to Vulcan." He also consoles himself with a bibliographical list of his works that had already been published in print, and thus had their content protected from catastrophic loss from fire:

"Books are not so readily exposed to destruction if they have multiplied themselves by the aid of type so that they may be read in more than a thousand copies dispersed throughout the earth, unless this universe which we inhabit be subjected to common ruin or flames spread themselves to all corners of the earth. It is by the benefit of divine art that I am as yet able to collect or seek again from friends or from booksellers my other works which were previously published. If judgment in this matter had been left in the hands of Vulcan, I should be bereft even of this small portion of my books. Unless it is burdensome to the reader, I shall subjoin a catalogue of my personal library constructed from works hitherto published in my name or dedicated to me, which Vulcan consumed with the rest, but with less harm to me since they are available elsewhere." (p. 32).

Bartholin then lists 129 printed works either written and published by him or dedicated to him.  At the end of De bibliothecae incendio Bartholin expresses gratitude that he survived the fire even if his "brain-children" were sacrified, and thanks the king, Christian V, for his support after this tragedy. By this time Bartholin was regarded as the leading physician in Denmark, and because of this tragic accident the king of Denmark freed Bartholin's estate of all taxes and appointed Bartholin his personal physician, with handsome compensation.

♦ Bartholin's work reflects a scholarly perspective very different from our time, and also exhibits what would have to be called credulity, especially with the following reference to Homer written in gold on a dragon's intestine—a story which, according to Bartholin, was repeated by several authorities:

"The library of Constantinople, founded by Theodosius the younger in 473, and a rival to that of Ptolemy [i.e. the Library of Alexandria], in the reign of the Emperor Zeno was consumed by a fire instigated by the leader of the image-breakers, the [later] Emperor Leo the Isaurian. Earlier, in the time of Basilicus Tyrannus, the same library had perished in flames aroused by the plebs in their hatred of Basilicus [Basiliscus], and among the books was the intestine of a dragon twenty feet long on which the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer had been written in letters of gold. But Claudius Clemens in his Bibliothecae Instructio considers that it had been snatched from the conflagration, because when Leo the Isaurian, struck by a mad fury against the sacred images, burned whatsoever volumes had been restored of the thirty-three thousand of the library, Constantinus, Cedrenus, Zonaras and Glycas testify that the intestine was still there, unless perchance, in a kind of veneration a new one had been fashioned in imitation of the former intestine which had perished in the first fire. According to the Annals of Constantinus Manassus [Manasses], translated by Lewenclavius, in which the fire is well described, I am disposed to consider the one instigated by Leo III, the Isaurian, as the first." (p.7.)

Bartholin, On the Burning of His Library and On Medical Travel, translated by C. D. O'Malley (1961) 7, 32. (Bracketed insertions and hyperlinks are my additions.)

In Dissertations academiques. . . avec un discours sur. . . un cylindre arithmetique published in Paris Pierre Petit describes an arithmetic cylinder, which he says is more affordable and easier to use than Pascal’s Pascaline.

Samuel Morland publishes The Description and Use of Two Arithmetic Instruments, the first monograph on a calculating machine published in English. The book describes modifications to the Pascaline.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz makes a drawing of his calculating machine mechanism.

Using a stepped drum, the Leibniz Stepped Reckoner, or step reckoner, mechanized multiplication as well as addition by performing repetitive additions. Leibniz had only a wooden model and two brass examples of the machine constructed. These would have been seen by relatively few people. However, because of descriptions published from 1710 onward, the machine was well-enough known to have great influence. The stepped-drum gear was the only workable solution to certain calculating machine problems until about 1875.

Leibniz first published a brief illustrated description of his machine in "Brevis descriptio machinae arithmeticae, cum figura. . . ," Miscellanea Berolensia ad incrementum scientiarum (1710) 317-19, figure 73. The lower portion of the frontispiece of the journal volume also shows a a tiny model of Leibniz's calculator.

"Leibniz got the idea for a calculating machine in 1672 in Paris, from a pedometer. Later he learned about Pascal's machine when he read Pascal's Pensées. He concentrated on expanding Pascal's mechanism so it could multiply and divide. He presented a wooden model to the Royal Society of London on February 1, 1673, and received much encouragement. In a letter of March 26, 1673 to Johann Friedrich, where he mentioned the presentation in London, Leibniz described the purpose of the "arithmetic machine" as making calculations "leicht, geschwind, gewiß" [sic], i.e. easy, fast, and reliable. Leibniz also added that theoretically the numbers calculated might be as large as desired, if the size of the machine was adjusted; quote: "eine zahl von einer ganzen Reihe Ziphern, sie sey so lang sie wolle (nach proportion der größe der Machine)" [sic]. In English: "a number consisting of a series of figures, as long as it may be (in proportion to the size of the machine)". His first preliminary brass machine was built 1674 - 1685. His so-called 'older machine' was built 1686 - 1694. The 'younger machine', the surviving machine, was built from 1690 to 1720.

"In 1775 the 'younger machine' was sent to Göttingen University for repair, and was forgotten. In 1876 a crew of workmen found it in an attic room of a Göttingen University building. It was returned to Hannover in 1880. In 1894-1896 Artur Burkhardt, founder of a major German calculator company restored it, and it has been kept in the Niedersaächsischen Landesbibliothek ever since" (Wikipedia article on Stepped Reckoner, accessed 05-25-2009).

Tomash & Williams, The Erwin Tomash Library on the History of Computing (2009) L69 (p. 772-73).

Stockholms Auktionsverk (Stockholm's Auction House) is founded. It is the world's oldest auction house.

Jesuit Daniel van Papenbroeck (Papebroch) publishes "Propylaeum antiquarium circa veri ac falsi discrimen in vetustis membranis" in Acta sanctorum, Aprilis II (Antwerp, 1675) I-LII. In this paper Papenbroeck proved that a charter guaranteeing certain privileges to the rival religious order, the Benedictines, supposedly issued by the Merovingian king Dagobert in 646, was a forgery. He also argued that handwriting should be examined carefully before an ancient document is accepted as genuine. This paper may be considered the beginning of palaeography.

Boyle, Medieval Latin Palaeography: A Bibliographical Introduction (1984) no. 71.

Lecturer in law in Halle and Jena, Ahasaver Fritsch publishes Tractatus de typographis, bibliopolis chartariis et bibliopegis (Treatise on Book Printers, Booksellers, Paper Manufacturers and Bookbinders).  This treatise on the book trade focused on  specifically on statutes, ordinances, liberties, disputes, censorship and inspection of printing offices and bookshops.

"Fritsch is one of the first writers on the subject to explicitly define an author's exclusive right to permit new editions of his work. The first publisher, however, has a right of priority to the publication of the new edition, provided that he offers the author terms which are as good as those promised by competing publishers (p.47). In Fritsch's view, however, the author's right is not meant to produce profit, but only honour. Quoting the Jena law professor Johannes Gryphiander (1580-1652), he states on page 37f.: 'The works of authors are sold to book printers and book sellers for a certain price, but in such a way, though, that the latter have the profit, whereas the honour goes to the former.' Fritsch' s views on authors' rights to new editions and his notion that the author may expect to gain honour but not profit, are probably based on his own experiences and hopes as an author and lecturer. However, when he presents a detailed justification of book privileges, Fritsch proves himself to be a judicious political theorist: privileges do not fall into the general category of monopolies which are to be rejected. He gives three reasons for arguing thus: (i) the demands of natural justness ('natürliche Billigkeit'), whereby the first publishers have to be protected, so that they may recoup their investment; (ii) publishers are encouraged ('angefrischet') by the award of privileges to have valuable new books printed at their expense; (iii) privileges are granted only for a limited term, so that they cannot seriously harm the public in any way. These three aspects sound quite modern: a special protection is justified on the grounds of the natural right not to suffer unjust damages and to recoup what one has invested. Furthermore, such special protection is justified as the means of providing an incentive for further publishing ventures. Nevertheless, such exemptions from the general rejection of monopolies are only to be allowed for a strictly limited term" (Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org, referring to the anonymous German translation of 1750).

Philologist and bibliographer Johann Hallervord publishes Bibliotheca curiosa in qua plurimi rarissimi atque paucis cogniti scriptores in Königsberg and Frankfurt.

Bibliotheca curiosa was the first bibliography of rare books issued with the book collector in mind. Hallervord (1644-1676) mentioned more than 2800 authors, and included information on anonymous and pseudonymous works. As the son of a bookseller, and probably a scion of the Hallervord family of publishers in Stettin, Hallervord had access to important  public and private libraries in Königsberg and in the Baltic regions, on which he was able to base his research.

Breslauer & Folter, Bibliography: Its History and Development (1984) no. 75.

Regole, e Capitoli per l'eretione, e mantenimento degli Archivii publici delle Città di Piacenza, e Parma are  published in Parma, Italy.

These may be the first published principles, rules and procedures for archival administration and operation.

A dated manuscript by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, preserved in the Niedersachsische Landesbibliothek, Hannover, “includes a brief discussion of the possibility of designing a mechanical binary calculator which would use moving balls to represent binary digits.”

Though Leibniz thought of the application of binary arithmetic to computing in 1679, the machine he outlined was never built, and he published nothing on the subject until his Explication de l'arithmétique binaire, qui se sert des seuls caracteres 0 & 1; avec des remarques sur son utilité, & sur ce qu'elle donne le sens des anciens figues Chinoises de Fohy' published in Histoire de l'Académie Royale des Sciences année MDCCIII. Avec les mémoires de mathématiques which appeared in print in 1705.

"The publication of the Explication was prompted by Leibniz's correspondence with Joachim Bouvet, a member of the Jesuit Mission in China. Leibniz had developed an interest in China, and in April 1697 he edited a collection of letters and essays by members of the Mission, entitled Novissima Sinica. A copy of this came into the hands of Bouvet, who wrote to Leibniz on 18 October 1697 expressing his commendation of the work. Thus began an extended correspondence between the two men which proved to be very important for the dissemination of Leibniz's ideas about binary arithmetic. The crucial exchange began on 15 February 1701, when Leibniz wrote to Bouvet describing for his correspondent the principles of his binary arithmetic, including the analogy of the formation of all the numbers from 0 and 1 with the creation of the world by God out of nothing. Bouvet immediately recognised the relationship between the hexagrams of the I ching and the binary numbers and he communicated his discovery in a letter written in Peking on 4 November 1701. This reached Leibniz, after a detour through England, on 1 April 1703. With this letter, Bouvet enclosed a woodcut of the arrangement of the hexagrams attributed to Fu-Hsi, the mythical founder of Chinese culture, which holds the key to the identification. Within a week of receiving Bouvet's letter, Leibniz had sent to Abbé Bignon for publication in the Mémoires of the Paris Academy his Explication de l'Arithmétique binaire,... & sue ce qu'elle donne le sens des anciens figures Chinoises de Fohy. Ten days later he sent a brief account to Hans Sloane, the Secretary of the Royal Society. Leibniz viewed binary arithmetic less as a computational tool than as a means of discovering mathematical, philosophical and even theological truths. He remarked to Tschirnhaus in 1682 that he anticipated from the use of binary numbers discoveries in number theory that other progressions could not reveal. It was at the same time a candidate for the characteristica generalis, his long sought-for alphabet of human thought. With base 2 numeration Leibniz witnessed a confluence of several intellectual strands in his world view, including theological and mystical ideas of order, harmony and creation. Fontanelle, secretary of the Paris Academy, wrote the unsigned review of Liebniz's paper for the Mémoires section of the volume. He noted that arithmetic could have different bases besides ten; bases such as 12, and two as in the case of Leibniz's binary system. He also noted that although the binary system was not practical for common use Leibniz thought that it would be of advantage in advanced mathematics" (W.P. Watson, antiquarian book description, http://www.ilabdatabase.com/db/detail.php?booknr=360538539, accessed 01-21-2010).

This manuscript was first published, along with as well as facsimiles of Leibniz's "Explication de l'arithmétique binaire" (1705) and his two letters to Johann Christian Schulenberg on binary arithmetic (March 29 and May 17, 1698), published in the Opera Omnia of 1768, with historical articles and translations in German, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Leibniz's death as Herrn von Leibniz' Rechnung mit Null und Eins (1966).

In his book on medieval documents, De re diplomatica libri sex, Benedictine monk Jean Mabillon founds the formal study of palaeography and diplomatics.

During the Middle Ages, the production of spurious charters and other documents was common, either to provide written documentation of existing rights or to bolster the plausibility of claimed rights.  In 1675 the Jesuit Daniel van Papenbroeck (Papebroch) proved that a charter guaranteeing certain privileges to the Benedictines, supposedly issued by the Merovingian king Dagobert in 646, was a forgery.

"The French Benedictine order, which had recently been revived under the title of the Congregation of Saint Maur and was devoting itself to various scholarly enterprises, treated van Papenbroeck's work as a challenge. One of its most able members, Dom Jean Mabillon (1632-1707), spent several years in studying charters and manuscripts, drawing up in a systematic way for the first time a series of criteria for testing the authenticity of medieval documents. The result was De re diplomatica (1681), to which we owe the word diplomatic, normally used as the technical term for the study of legal and official documents. Mabillon's work dealt also to a lesser extent with manuscripts, but was resticted to Latin. It was immediately recognized as a masterpiece, even by van Papenbroeck, who had a cordial exchange of letters with Mabillon, acknowledging that his attempt to prove the spuriousness of all Merovingian charters was an excess of skepticism. On the other hand his thesis about the charter of 646 was upheld" (Reynolds & Wilson, Scribes and Scholars 3rd ed [1991] 189).

Boyle, Medieval Latin Palaeography: A Bibliographical Introduction (1983) no. 72.  Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man (1967) no. 158.

Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora publishes Libra astronomica. y philosophica in Mexico City. This may be the first scientific book written by a native Latin American to be published in the Western Hemisphere.

In 1690 Sigüenza y Góngora published Libra astronomica y philosophica also in Mexico City. This was the last word in a controversy between Sigüenza and the jesuit priest and astronomer Eusebio Kino over Sigüenza's scientific explanation of comets.

Joseph Moxon publishes his Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing as part of his survey of the chief trades of his day. This was the first printing manual published in English, and the first comprehensive manual in any language published on printing—a trade that was passed down through apprenticeship since the mid-15th century.

Moxon's Mechanick Exercises was intended to furnish his readers with basic instruction in all the chief trades of his day.  Fourteen numbers, devoted to smithying, joining, carpentry and related arts, were issued between 1677 and 1680, before lack of interest, and the Gunpowder Plot— which "took off the minds of my few customers from buying" (Moxon's "Advertisement," Vol. ii)— forced Moxon temporarily to cease production.

¶ Vol. 1 was the first book in England to be published in parts, or fascicules. Moxon resumed the series in 1683 with Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing, issued in twenty-four parts during 1683 and 1684. The general title page was issued with the first number in 1683, and bears that date in its imprint. 

Moxon had worked for years as a master printer. He had also cut steel punches for letters, made moulds and matrices, and cast and sold type. He provided detailed technical accounts of the tools of the compositor and pressman, the art of typefounding, and the work of the compositor, corrector, pressman and other members of the printing trades as they had come down to his day. Most of these skills had not changed materially for nearly two hundred years, and would remain unaltered until the mechanization of printing in the nineteenth century.  Moxon's manual "put into writing a knowledge that was wholly traditional" (Moxon, Mechanick Exercises, edited by Davis and Carter [1962] vii), with such success that it was copied by virtually every writer of printing manuals and served as a standard text for over two hundred years.  

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 1561.

Daniel Michael Schmatz publishes in Sultzbach Neu-vorgestelltes auf der löblichen Kunst Buchdruckerey gebräuchliches Format-Buch. This was not a comprehensive printing manual like Moxon's but, "a guide to imposition, different alphabets, Greek and Latin abbreviations, alchemical and pharmaceutical symbols. This is what the journeyman printer needed for ready reference." (Roger Gaskell). It was the fourth printing manual published in German.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz publishes "Nova methodus pro maximis et minimis, itemque tangentibus, quae nec fractas nec irrationales quantitates moratur, & singulare pro illi calculi genus" in the periodical, Acta eruditorum. This was his first paper on the differential calculus, published nine years after he had independently discovered it.  Although Newton had probably discovered the calculus earlier than Leibniz, Leibniz was the first to publish his method, which employed a notation superior to that used by Newton.  The priority dispute between Newton and Leibniz over the calculus is one of the most famous controversies in the history of science; it led to a breach between English and Continental mathematics that was not healed until the early nineteenth century.

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 1326. Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man (1967) no. 160.

Dutch physician, anatomist, poet, and playwright Govert Bidloo publishes Anatomia humani corporis. This large folio contains an engraved title, engraved portrait of Bidloo by Abraham Bloteling after Gérard de Lairesse and 105 engraved plates after Lairesse, probably by Bloteling and Peter and Philip van Gunst. The work was issued in  Amsterdam for the widow of Joannes van Someren, the heirs of Joannes van Dyk, Henry Boom and widow of Theodore Boom.

Considered as an artistic meditation on anatomy, Gerard de Lairesse’s designs are a total departure from the idealistic tradition inaugurated by the Vesalian woodcuts. They are also worlds apart from the productions of the Odoardo Fialetti - Giulio Casserio collaboration. Lairesse displayed his figures with everyday realism and sensuality, contrasting the raw dissected parts of the body with the full, soft surfaces of undissected flesh surrounding them; placing flayed, bound figures in ordinary nightclothes or bedding; setting objects such as a book, a jar, a crawling fly in the same space as a dissected limb or torso. He thus brought the qualities of Dutch still-life painting into anatomical illustration, and gave a new, darker expression to the significance of dissection. De Lairesse’s images of dissected pregnancies and premature infants also reflect compassion—a quality unusual in art that was intended primarily to be scientific.

A painter and writer on art theory, Lairesse was influenced by Rembrandt, who painted his portrait in 1665, and also by the French styles of Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain. The French called Lairesse the “Dutch Poussin.” Lairesse suffered from congenital syphilis, which gave him a deformed nose visible in Rembrandt’s portrait. Perhaps because he had always lived with disease Lairesse had more than a casual interest in medicine. Syphilis made him blind in 1690, and for the rest of his active life Lairesse supported himself by lecturing and writing about art, publishing two books on drawing and painting which were widely reprinted and translated throughout the eighteenth century.

Some of Lairesse’s drawings were probably engraved by Abraham Bloteling. A line engraver and creator of mezzotint plates who worked in both Holland and England, Bloteling was particularly famous for the quality of his mezzotints, for which he initiated a more thorough system of preparing the grounds, and may have invented the rocker. According to Choulant, Haller and Moehsen believed that some plates in the series were engraved by the brothers Pieter and Philip van Gunst. Despite imperfections from the point of view of dissection, which Choulant and others have pointed out, the Bidloo—de Lairesse anatomical studies reflect much that is good, including early depictions of skin and hair from observation with a microscope.

Bidloo began this project with de Lairesse around 1676 during a period in which he was also writing plays in Amsterdam, obtaining his medical degree, and working as a surgeon. It would appear that Bidloo brought his flair for drama to the conception and realization of this project. The 105 large drawings were probably completed about 1682, after which the plates had to be engraved—a huge production.

Choulant, History and Bibliography of Anatomic Illustration (1920) 250. Dumaître, La Curieuse Destiné des Planches Anatomiques de Gérard de Lairesse (1982). Hofer, Baroque Book Illustration, 146. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) No. 231. Roberts & Tomlinson, The Fabric of the Body, 309-17. Wax, The Mezzotint: History and Technique (1990) 25-26.

Isaac Newton publishes Philosophia naturalis principia mathematica.

We probably know as much about the printing history of Newton's Principia mathematica as of any book of the seventeenth century.  The definitive scholarship on the writing and printing of the Principia appears in I. B. Cohen's Introduction to Newton's "Principia" (1971), and in Koyré‚ and Cohen's variorum edition of the Principia (1972), which also contains William Todd's definitive bibliography of the first three editions.  Other useful research on this work was conducted by A. N. L. Munby nearly forty years ago.  Munby's and Todd's observations may be summarized here. The original printer's manuscript in the hand of Newton's amanuensis, Humphrey Newton, still exists, as do various copies of the first edition with Isaac Newton's autograph corrections.  The expenses of publication of the first edition were borne by Edmond Halley, as neither Newton nor the Royal Society had sufficient funds, and booksellers, who in those days often acted as publishers, typically refused to risk their own money on esoteric scientific books.  Halley also edited the work and saw it through the press, reporting his progress to Newton in a series of letters which are preserved at Cambridge. 

Having paid for the edition himself, Halley sent out presentation copies at Newton's direction and also sent Newton twenty copies for his personal use.  Halley decided to market the book by placing copies on consignment with various booksellers, and he sent Newton forty copies, some bound, some in sheets, which he asked Newton to "place in the hands of one or more of your ablest booksellers to dispose of them." Munby observed that many of the bindings of the two-line imprint issue were similar, suggesting that Halley may have had many of the copies bound at one shop.

Munby researched the significance of the two states of the title page of the Principia, concluding that the more commonly found state, with the title page uncancelled and the so-called two-line imprint, reflects Halley's initial sales strategy of placing the work on consignment with many booksellers ("apud plures Bibliopolas").  The state with the three-line imprint, including the name of the bookseller, Samuel Smith, reflects Halley's decision to turn over a significant portion of the edition to Smith, probably for foreign distribution.  The bookseller Heinrich Zeitlinger, of Henry Sotheran Ltd., first made the useful observation that many of the copies with the three-line "Smith" imprint were exported to the Continent.  Smith was known to be very active in the import and export of books, and Munby stated that he knew of only two "Smith" copies in contemporary English bindings.  The contemporary binding on the Norman copy is clearly French.

From his bibliographical analysis of the first edition Todd concluded that the edition was divided between two compositors, one setting the first two books, the other setting the third.  "The first compositor, however, was allowed too few sheets and too many foliations, a circumstance which necessitated his signing a supplementary gathering *** and paging it 377-383, 400."  Todd identified typographical variants which seem to be randomly distributed throughout the edition and are thus not indicative of any priority.

Todd also described the distribution of watermarks in the Principia: "The text paper exhibits a water-mark of a fleur-de-lis within a coat of arms (Heawood 626) only in preliminaries and certain sections in the earlier portion of the books, indicating perhaps that the signatures so distinguished are of later, revised settings printed off at the same time.  All copies have this water-mark in P-2K; some have it also in A, F-G, M-O, 2M-2N."  The distribution of watermarks appears to have nothing to do with the distribution of the variants listed above.

In estimating the size of the first edition Munby acknowledged that the work went out of print quickly and was already difficult to obtain in December 1691, when Nicholas Fatio de Duillier discussed a new edition in a letter to Christiaan Huygens.  Extrapolating from the partial census figures available in 1952, Munby conjectured that at least 150 copies of the work were then extant, concluding from this and from the book's relatively common appearances in the sale rooms that "the whole edition cannot have comprised less than three hundred copies, and the figure may well have been a hundred more than this."  The plentiful sales records in the forty years since Munby's account would certainly corroborate the higher estimate. Copies with the three-line imprint are much rarer than those with the two-line, suggesting that the so-called "Smith" copies may only have comprised  between seventeen and thirty-three percent of the edition. 

Newton's personal copy of the first edition of the Principia, with Newton's autograph corrections for the second edition, is preserved at the Wrenn Library, Trinity College, Cambridge.

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 1586. Cohen, Introduction to Newton's Principia, ch. IV.  Munby, "The two titlepages of the distribution of the first edition of Newton's Principia," Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 10 (October 1952).  Todd, "A bibliography of the Principia.  Part I: The three substantive editions," in Koyré‚ & Cohen, Isaac Newton's Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica II,  851-853.

Cornelis a Beughem publishes at Amsterdam, Incunabula typographiae s. catalogus librorum scriptorumque proximis ab inventione typographiae annis ad annum Christi MD inclusive in quavis lingua editorum.

This was the first attempt to comprehend and organize the collected literature of early printing, and the first use of of the term incunabula in the title of a book on the history of early printing. Beughem cited approximately 3000 titles.  A bookseller and city counselor at Emmerich, in the Duchy of Cleves under the rule of the Electors of Brandenburg, and author of several bibliographies, Beughem has been called the foremost bibliographer of the 17th century

Cornelis a Beughem issues Bibliotheca mathematica et artificosa novissima. . . conspectus primus. This was the first independently published and comprehensive bibliography of mathematics, limited to books published from 1551 onward. Pages 465-526 contain a bibliography of atlases.

Publick Occurrences is issued in Boston, but suppressed after only one issue. It was the first newspaper published in North America.

William Rittenhouse founds the first paper mill in the United States, on the banks of the Monoshone Creek near Germantown, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia.

English Economist Sir William Petty publishes Political Arithmetick, a major comparative study of the wealth and economic policies of England and her rivals France and Holland.  This was the first of Petty's works to contain in its title the phrase he had coined to describe the application of statistics to economic theory and policy.  Petty was the first to employ numerical evaluation in economics, and his work provided the decisive impulse toward econometrics and the general application of statistics.

Polymath Carlos de Sigüenza y Gongóra prepares the first-ever map of all of New Spain.

"He also drew hydrologic maps of the Valley of Mexico. In 1692 King Charles II named him official geographer for the colony. As royal geographer, he participated in the 1692 expedition to Pensacola Bay, Florida under command of Andrés de Pez, to seek out defensible frontiers against French encroachment. He mapped Pensacola Bay and the mouth of the Mississippi: in 1693, he described the terrain in Descripción del seno de Santa María de Galve, alias Panzacola, de la Mobila y del Río Misisipi" (Wikipedia article on Carlos de Sigüenza y Gongóra, accessed 01-10-2009).

Having been expanded under Louis XIV, the Bibliothèque national de France first opens to the public.

English astronomer, mathematician, geophysicist, meterologist and physicist Edmond Halley publishes "An Estimate of the Degrees of Mortality of Mankind, Drawn from Curious Tables of the Births and Funerals at the City of Breslaw, with an Attempt to Ascertain the Price of Annuities Upon Lives" in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. He compiled the "Breslau Tables" to show the proportion of men able to bear arms. . . to estimate mortality rates, to ascertain the price of annuities upon lives.

J. Norman (ed), Morton's Medical Bibliography 5th ed. (1991) No. 1687.

Lapse of the Printing Act in England ends pre-publication censorship in that country, stimulating the growth of newspapers and other publications.

The St. Phillips Church Parsonage Provincial Library in Charleston, South Carolina, is founded. It is the first public lending library in the American Colonies.

English surgeon and anatomist William Cowper publishes The Anatomy of Humane Bodies. . . .The large folio volume includes a mezzotint portrait of Cowper by Smith after Closterman, an allegorical engraved title attributed to Abraham Bloteling with pasted-on English title in cartouche, a second engraved title with vignette by Sturt, and  114 plates, of which 105 are designed by Gérard de Lairesse and probably engraved by Bloteling, and 9 plates mostly drawn and engraved by Michael van der Gucht. The volume is printed in Oxford at the Sheldonian Theatre and issued in London by Samuel Smith & Benjamin Walford.

This is the first edition in English of the original plates designed for Govert Bidloo by Gérard de Lairesse, a painter who rivaled Rembrandt in popularity in his time. The plates were originally issued with Bidloo's Latin text and published in 1685. (See the entry in this database.) Bidloo’s text, however, was widely criticized, and perhaps because of this Cowper obtained 300 sets of the original plates from the publishers in Amsterdam, and arranged to supply an entirely new text in English to accompany a reissue of the original engravings, with a few additions. The new English text was clearly superior, and the basis for later Latin editions, and Cowper also commissioned nine  new plates. However, Cowper did not acknowledge Bidloo, even going so far as to paste over Bidloo’s name with his own in the cartouche on the engraved allegorical title. This action resulted in a bitter plagiarism dispute between the two-- one of the most famous in medical history. In 1700 Bidloo went so far as to publish his Gulielmus Cowper, criminalis literari citatus, coram tribunali attacking Cowper in considerable detail.  Russell, British Anatomy, 211.

There are about 150 paper mills in England. Together they employ about 2500 people.

Christoph Hendreich publishes only the first volume (A-B) of Pandectae Brandeburgicae Continentes I. Bibliothecam. . . Auctorum inpressorum [!] & Manuscr. partem. . . nomina plurimorum, Anonymorum, Pseudonymorum & c. explicata. . . II. Indicem materiarum praecipuarum.

Named for the Great Elector of Brandenburg whom Hendreich served as librarian, this was was an attempt to produce a universal author bibliography of books and manuscripts. The first volume covering letters A and B listed 50,000 works by 15,000 authors, reflective of the significant growth of information by the end of the seventeenth century. The author, who died in 1702 did not live to complete any further volumes.

Breslauer & Folter, Bibliography: Its History and Development (1984) no. 92.

English Physician and comparative anatomist Edward Tyson publishes Orang-Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris; or, the Anatomy of a Pygmie Compared with that of a Monkey, an Ape and a Man,  including 8 folding plates engraved by Michael Vandergucht after drawings by the artist and anatomist, William Cowper.

Tyson's anatomy of the "orang-outang" was the first work to demonstrate scientifically the structural relationships between the anatomy of man and the anthropoid ape, in Tyson's case a chimpanzee. For Tyson the term Orang-Outang meant "man of the woods." The Dutch surgeon and anatomist Nicholas (or Nicolaes) Tulp had used the same words to describe a chimpanzee, which he illustrated in his Observationum medicarum (1641). The application of the phrase orang-outang in its modern sense to the Pongo family had not yet occurred.

Perhaps with some humor, but also to confirm the anatomical similarities, Tyson had Cowper draw the standing dissected figures of chimpanzees in the style of the famous Vesalian musclemen. A believer in the "Great Chain of Being," Tyson identified the chimpanzee as the link directly below mankind, stating in his "Epistle Dedicatory" that it "seems the Nexus of the Animal and Rational."

Tyson's anatomical study-- the first conducted of a great ape-- had a powerful influence on all subsequent thought on man's place in nature. The last section of Orang-Outang is devoted to "A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients," an early and major contribution to the study of primate-oriented folklore.

Cole, History of Comparative anatomy, 198-221. Montague, Edward Tyson (1943) ch. 8. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 2120.