Science Art | The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

Scientific illustration of... well, there's a lot going on here. We've got a mythical-looking figure in a loincloth, sort of half-Zeus (his right hand is holding lightning bolts) and half-Hephaestus (his left hand, to our right, is on a large switch) Along the lower right of the image there are insets of various early 20th-century electrical devices. To the left and across the bottom is a block of text advertising a course in electrical science in the form of a book by S. Gernsback (doubtless a relative of the publisher, Hugo Gernsback) and H.W. Secor. It only costs a dollar!

Science Art: Experimental Electricity Course, 1916.

8 January 2023 grant 0

This is how you advertise a science book. At least, it was how Hugo Gernsback did in the pages of The Electrical Experimenter in September […]

Science Art: Papillons, from Larousse Universe, 1922

1 January 2023 grant 0

Thanks to an unexpected gift from an old friend, I was just reading an article in the print edition of Scientific American about the Sora […]

Scientific illustration of an ad touting nuclear power, in a 1950s/1960s style, showing a cheerful Santa over a young boy reaching for a colorful atomic model under the words "Science by Santa: Remember bad kids get coal, Good kids get Uranium which produces 3 million times more power and 10 million times less waste for their christmas lights." (With the odd capitalization in the original text.)

Science Art: Science by Santa: Remember bad kids get coal, Good kids get Uranium….,

25 December 2022 grant 0

Uranium, which produces 3 million times more energy and 10 million times less waste! I honestly have no idea if this PSA is real or […]

Scientific illustration: a B&W image of the interior of a spacecraft and an astronaut, with a small, orange item floating in midair off to the middle right - a tiny Snoopy doll used to measure relative weightlessness inside the cabin.

Science Art: Snoopy Hitches Ride to Space Aboard Artemis I, November 2022

18 December 2022 grant 0

This is a NASA-released image of a very important piece of space technology. That small, color-corrected orange thing is a tiny plush Snoopy doll used […]

An aerial photo of flowing streams of lava, steam and smoke rising above the black stone and glowing orange lava. Photo from the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, taken by the Civil Air Patrol.

Science Art: Mauna Loa Northeast Rift Zone Eruption – November 28, 2022, Civil Air Patrol

11 December 2022 grant 0

Rivers of lava glow a burning orange, sending white plumes up from a black stone landscape. This is a photograph of Hawaii – a place […]

Scientific illustrations of spiny seashells, ghost white against a saturated black background.

Science Art: Scabrotrophon Species, Roland Houart, 2003.

4 December 2022 grant 0

These are seashells – murexes from the deep waters off Vanuatu called Scabrotrophon inspiratum. Belgian researcher Roland Houart wrote about them (and as far as […]

Scientific illustration of a telescope array capturing a gamma-ray burst: dark skies and glowing energy fields. Superbossa.com and C. Righi.

Science Art: MAGIC telescopes detected the highest-energy gamma rays from a Gamma Ray Burst…, 2019.

27 November 2022 grant 0

This is an illustration of MAGIC telescopes capturing images of very intense gamma rays. “MAGIC” refers to the twin Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) […]

Scientific illustration of elephant seals in Baja California, Mexico, seen as a photo of a diorama in the American Museum's "Hall of Ocean Life."

Science Art: Elephant Seals of Guadaloupe Island

20 November 2022 grant 0

This is a likeness of the elephant seals of Baja California, Mexico, as displayed in 1933 in the newly opened Hall of Ocean Life in […]

Scientific illustration by Rick Guidice of a space colony, complete with cylindrical walls and people hanging out in the greenery growing inside.

Science Art: Space Colony Interior by Rick Guidice, c. 1975.

13 November 2022 grant 0

This is part of a presentation created by physicist Gerard K. O’Neill – one of three “summer studies” he carried out in the 1970s on […]

Scientific illustration by Olof Sörling of a object that might be a ritual drum, or a throne, or might be something else. It looks a little like an inverted breadbasket, with many circular cutouts and circled-crosses as ornamentation.

Science Art: Balkåkra Ritual Object, Olof Sörling, 1917.

6 November 2022 grant 0

This is a drum. Or a gong. Or maybe a throne. Or a model of the universe with little solar disks around the edge. It […]

Scientific Illustration of the Lunar Lander Surveyor from the National Air and Space Museum

Science Art: Lunar Lander, Surveyor

30 October 2022 grant 0

This is one of the first American spacecraft to land on the moon. We sent machines there before we sent people. From the Smithsonian Open […]

Scientific illustration of smut growing on seeds and tiny flowers, seen very close up

Science Art: Flower of Polygonum persicarium distorted by Utricle smut and following figures, by J.E. Sowerby, 1872.

24 October 2022 grant 0

This is a bunch of smut. Mostly, it’s smut in the genus Ustilago growing on plants in the same genus as knotweed and buckwheat. The […]

Scientific illustration in the form of street art advertising "Squid Facts: Text 'Squid' to 1-833-SCi-TEXT"

Science Art: “Get Squid Facts” street art, Philadelphia, 2022.

16 October 2022 grant 0

A friend of mine clued me into this project. It really works and I encourage you to try it. Did you know cephalopods have been […]

Scientific illustration in the form of a 1900s comic strip parodying early electrical experiments. Cartoon shows a man on a treadmill being encouraged to lose weight while unknowingly powering up the inventor's bank of batteries.

Science Art: Reducing Apparatus, in “Phoney Patent Offizz,” The Electrical Experimenter, April 1917.

9 October 2022 grant 0

This is nerd humor from the dawn of the electric age. The “Phoney Patent Offizz” was apparently a regular column in Hugo Gernsback’s The Electrical […]

Scientific illustration of a baboon with a tail "exactly like a pig's."

Science Art: Pigtailed Baboon, 1811.

2 October 2022 grant 0

According to the accompanying text, this illustration depicts a baboon species “easily distinguished by its tail, which is four inches long, slender, and exactly like […]