diagrams

that

changed the world

From the Earliest Cave Paintings

to the Innovation of the iPod

Scott Christianson

A PLUME BOOK

Contents
Introduction

010

Chauvet Cave

Drawings (c.

30,000 BC)

Triple Spiral (c. 3200 BC)

014
016

Marshall Islands Stick Navigation Charts

(c.

2000-500 BC)

Windmill-Powered "Car" / Submarine,

Guido da Vigevano (1328)

062

Astrarium, Giovanni de'Dondi (1364)

064

The Voynich

066

Manuscript (c. 1404-38)

018

The Castle of Perseverance (c. 1405-25)

068

Babylonian "Pythagoras Theorem"

(c. 1900-1700 BC)

020

Exploded-View Diagram,
Mariano Taccola (c. 1450)

070

Phaistos Disc (c. 1700 BC)

022

Aztec Calendar (1479)

072

Egyptian Book of the Dead (c. 1550-50 BC)

024

Vitruvian Man, Leonardo da Vinci (c. 1487)

074

Sheet Music (c. 1400 BC)

026

Helicopter

Battering Ram (c. 865-860 BC)

028

Babylonian Map

030

of the World (c. 600 BC)

Classical Orders of Architecture

(c.

600-100 BC)

Acupuncture

032

Points (c. 305-204

BC)

034

Elements of Geometry, Euclid (c. 300 BC)

036

Rosetta Stone (196 BC)

038

The Ptolemaic

Claudius Ptolemy (c. AD 140-150)

040

Ptolemy's World Map,

Claudius Ptolemy (c. AD 150)

042

of

Tyre (c.

AD

044

300)

076

Leonardo da Vinci (c. 1510)

078

Triangulation, Regnier Gemma Frisius (1533)

080

Astronomicum Caesareum,
Petrus Apianus (1540)

082

Human

084

Body, Andreas Vesalius (1543)

Heliocentric Universe,

Copernicus (1543)

086

Camera Obscura,

Regnier Gemma Frisius (1544)

Porphyrian Tree,

Porphyry

Flying Machine,
1493-1505)

Foetus in the Womb,

Nicolaus

System,

and

Leonardo da Vinci (c.

088

The Four Books of Architecture,

Andrea Palladio (1570)

090

Flush Toilet, John Harington (1596)

092

Nazca Lines (c. AD 400-650)

046

Dunhuang Star Map (c. AD 649-684)

048

Johannes

Lunar

050

Telescope, Galileo Galilei (1610)

096

052

Moon Drawings, Galileo Galilei (1610)

098

054

Movement of Objects,
Rene Descartes (1644)

100

056

Pendulum Clock, Christiaan Huygens (1657)

102

058

Micrographia,

Robert Hooke

Prism "Crucial

Experiment",

Eclipse, Abu Rayhan al-Biruni (1019)

Heraldry (1127)
Compendium

of the

Peter of Poitiers

Genealogy
(c. 1230)

Carta Pisana (Chart of

of Christ,

Pisa) (c. 1275-1300)

Optics, Roger

Bacon (c. 1267-69)

Dante's Divine

Comedy,

Dante Alighieri (1308-21)

060

Kepler's

Law of

Planetary Motion,
Kepler (1609)

Isaac Newton (1666-72)

(1665)

094

104

106