Micrographia

When Robert Hooke turned his microscope on the ordinary world, he opened a strange new one. First published in 1665, this lavishly illustrated book records what he saw: the compound eye of a fly, the point of a needle gone ragged under magnification, the structure of cork in which he first used the word cell. Alongside the observations run bold speculations about light, combustion, and the nature of matter. Its huge fold-out engravings, drawn by Hooke himself, astonished readers and made microscopy fashionable. One of the founding works of modern science, it still conveys the thrill of looking closely for the very first time. Free to download as a PDF or EPUB.