Micrographia - The Original Classic Edition

Finally available, a high quality book of the original classic edition of Micrographia. This is a new and freshly published edition of this culturally important work by Robert Hooke, which is now, at last, again available to you. Enjoy this classic work today. These selected paragraphs distill the contents and give you a quick look inside Micrographia: I begin from that, and divide all the rest of the Board towards UT into inches, and the inches between the 25 and the end E (which need not be above two or three and thirty inches distant from the line XY) I subdivide into Decimals; then stopping the end F with soft Cement, or soft Wax, I invert the Frame, placing the head downwards, and the Orifice E upwards; and by it, with a small Funnel, I fill the whole Glass with Quicksilver; then by stopping the small Orifice E with my finger, I oftentimes erect and invert the whole Glass and Frame, and thereby free the Quicksilver and Glass from all the bubbles or parcels of lurking Air; then inverting it as before, I fill it top full with clear and well straind Quicksilver, and having made ready a small ball of pretty hard Cement, by heat made very soft, I press it into the hole E, and thereby stop it very fast; and to secure this Cement from flying out afterward, I bind over it a piece of Leather, that is spread over in the inside with Cement, and wound about it while the Cement is hot: Having thus softned it, I gently erect again the Glass after this manner: I first let the Frame down edge-wayes, till the edge RV touch the Floor, or ly horizontal; and then in that edging posture raise the end RS; this I do, that if there chance to be any Air hidden in the small Pipe E, it may ascend into the Pipe F, and not into the Pipe DC: Having thus erected it, and hung it by the hole Q, or fixt it perpendicularly by any other means, I open the end F, and by a small Syphon I draw out the Mercury so long, till I find the surface of it AB in the head to touch exactly the line XY; at which time I immediately take away the Syphon, and if by chance it be run somewhat below the line XY, by pouring in gently a little Mercury at F, I raise it again to its desired height, by this contrivance I make all the sensible rising and falling of the Mercury to be visible in the surface of the Mercury in the Pipe F, and scarce any in the head AB. ...The Glasses I used were of our English make, but though very good of the kind, yet far short of what might be expected, could we once find a way of making Glasses Elliptical, or of some more true shape; for though both Microscopes, and Telescopes, as they now are, will magnifie an Object about a thousand thousand times bigger then it appears to the naked eye; yet the Apertures of the Object-glasses are so very small, that very few Rays are admitted, and even of those few there are so many false, that the Object appears dark and indistinct: And indeed these inconveniences are such, as seem inseparable from Spherical Glasses, even when most exactly made; but the way we have hitherto made use of for that purpose is so imperfect, that there may be perhaps ten wrought before one be made tolerably good, and most of those ten perhaps every one differing in goodness one from another, which is an Argument, that the way hitherto used is, at least, very uncertain.