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20 rare antique books of Athanasius Kircher on 3 DVD's
These 3 data DVD's contain 20 antique books of famous Athanasius Kircher in facsimiles as HIGH RESOLUTION images, meaning that in most cases every page of the real book corresponds to an image. The resolution of these images varies from book to book. For example, "Arca Noe" has images resolution of 1200x1600 pixels, being the lowest resolution of all the books; all the other books have images resolution of approx. 1600x2400 pixels. Almost all the books are written in Latin; one book is the German translation of Phonurgia Nova. Many of the books contain wonderful illustrations as you can see below. They have a total of over 8000 pages.
 Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680) was a 17th century German Jesuit scholar who published around 40 works, most notably in the fields of oriental studies, geology, and medicine. Kircher has been compared to fellow Jesuit Roger Boscovich and to Leonardo da Vinci for his enormous range of interests, and has been honoured with the title "master of a hundred arts".
Kircher was the most famous "decipherer" of hieroglyphs of his day, although most of his assumptions and "translations" in this field have since been disproved as nonsensical. However, he did make an early study of Egyptian hieroglyphs, correctly establishing the link between the ancient Egyptian language and the Coptic language, for which he has been considered the founder of Egyptology. He was also fascinated with Sinology, and wrote an encyclopedia of China, in which he noted the early presence of Nestorian Christians but also attempted to establish more tenuous links with Egypt and Christianity.
Kircher's work with geology included studies of volcanos and fossils. One of the first people to observe microbes through a microscope, he was thus ahead of his time in proposing that the plague was caused by an infectious microorganism and in suggesting effective measures to prevent the spread of the disease. Kircher also displayed a keen interest in technology and mechanical inventions, and inventions attributed to him include a magnetic clock, various automatons and the first megaphone.
The invention of the magic lantern is often misattributed to Kircher, although he did conduct a study of the principles involved in his Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae.
Below you will see some sample pages (sizes reduced) from some of these books and also the list with all the books which you will find on these 3 data DVD's. |
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