Presented via Zoom webinar. Registration is for all three sessions.

November 3, 10, and 17, 2020

10:30 a.m. - Noon

The Course

Not long after the introduction of printing, scientific books began to provide illustrations. Often the image was simply an aid to identification, as in a wooduct of an iris, or a hedgehog, or an ammonite; sometimes it assisted in explaining the text, as with a diagram of a cosmological system. But occasionally an artisan and/or an author found a way to tweak an image in a new way to provide visual understanding that was far superior to what one could do with words. Those are the images that will attract our attention: cut-away views, exploded drawings, time-lapse images, moveable diagrams, images with flaps, simple graphs, pie-charts, periodic tables, thematic maps– the list is quite long. Each of these novel conventions had to be invented, and that is what we will pursue in this course—the step-by-step history of graphical innovation in scientific publications in the West, enriched by narratives of the people who wrote and illustrated these books.

The Instructor

Dr. William B. Ashworth, Jr., Associate Professor Emeritus of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City, and Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library.

Accessibility

Linda Hall Library encourages people of all abilities to enjoy our public programs. If you require reasonable accommodations in order to participate, please contact events@lindahall.org or call 816.926.8753 at least 24 hours in advance. Closed captions will be provided for videos and live presentations.

Email Communications

Once you register for this event, you will receive email communications from the Linda Hall Library and the Linda Hall Library Foundation. You may choose to opt out of these communications at any time. Your contact information will not be sold or provided to any third parties.