Industrial Revolution (1750 - 1850)
Historical photo of Philadelphia's Fairmount Water Works

How Philadelphia’s Water Pollution Problems Shaped the City

Distillations Podcast
Woodcut of well-dressed crowd and cow strapped to table

Smallpox and the Long Road to Eradication

Distillations Article
miners hauling electronics that are causing pollution

Rare Earths: The Hidden Cost to Their Magic

Distillations Podcast
Science history photo collage

Love, Hate, and Sex from the History of Science

Distillations Podcast
19th century breast reliever

Distilled #7: Bicycle Horn or Breast Pump?

Distillations Video
stereoscope with stereograph

Distilled #4: Virtual Reality in the 19th Century

Distillations Video

Probing the Mysteries of Human Digestion

Distillations Article

Opioids’ Devastating Return

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A detail of the inside cover art from the 1831 edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Book Club: Frankenstein in the 21st Century

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Portrait of alchemist in his lab

Interview: Curator Elisabeth Berry Drago

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Serious Fun

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The Alchemist and His Wife, ca. 1928, by Jacques Hammerer, after 17th-century original by David Ryckaert III.

Age of Alchemy
Museum

Old Friends

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What’s in a Logo?

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Fizzy Water

Distillations Video

Fit as a Fiddle: The Remarkable Lives of Cremonese Violins

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An 1822 star map by Alexander Jamieson shows the constellation Telescopium Herschelii, depicted here, ironically, as a refracting telescope.

A Giant of Astronomy

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Portrait of Ada Lovelace

Labor of Lovelace: A Children’s Introduction to a Programming Giant

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Detail of illustration outside confectionery, 1885

Our Mutual Friend

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A group of Amish people standing in a field

High-Tech and Amish

Distillations Podcast

The Age of Scurvy

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Old soda spray bottles in various colors

Fizzy Water

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Amputation

Auld Medicine

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Humphry Davy

Left Behind

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Nitrous oxide party

High Times

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Diagram of sports bra

Second Skin

Distillations Podcast

Second Skin: The Science of Stretch
Museum
Illustration of childbirth

(Natural) Childbirth

Distillations Podcast
Walter Potter's Monkey Riding a Goat

Death and Taxidermy

Distillations Video
Thomas Apel

Thomas Apel

People
Jean-Olivier Richard

Jean-Olivier Richard

People
Lynne Friedmann

Lynne Friedmann

People
Haeckel illustration of hummingbirds

Information Overload

Distillations Article

Learn
Learn

Historical Biographies
Learn
Medusa Nebula

Elements of Invention

Distillations Article
Cottingley Fairy

The Magic of It All

Distillations Article
Esperanto postcard

Speaking in Tongues

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Modern Books and Journals
Collections

Rare Books
Collections
Detail of a European stained glass image of St. George from the early 15th century.

From Nanotech to Nanoscience

Distillations Article
Not-so-safe chemistry lab practices, ca. 1910

Not-So-Great Moments in Chemical Safety

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Illustration depicting an early 19th-century London street scene with citizens commenting on the recent invention of gas-lighting.

Bright Light

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Oil rig

Shining Light on the Frontier of Mineral Science

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Portrait of James Smithson

A Gift for the Ages

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Recherches Chimiques

Materials Matter

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Musée des Arts et Métiers

Pour l’Amour de Lavoisier

Distillations Article
The Laboratorio Chimico at the Museum of Science at the University of Lisbon

Elements of the Past

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Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (left) and Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen.

Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff
Historical Profile
Michael Faraday. Engraved by D. J. Pound from a photograph by Mayall.

Michael Faraday
Historical Profile

Joseph Priestley
Historical Profile
An 1830 engraving of Sir Humphry Davy, by G. R. Newton, after a painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830).

Humphry Davy
Historical Profile
Louis Pasteur in his laboratory, holding a jar containing the spinal cord of a rabbit infected with rabies, which he used to develop a vaccine against the disease.

Louis Pasteur
Historical Profile
Amedeo Avogadro. Edgar Fahs Smith Collection, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania.

Amedeo Avogadro
Historical Profile
Lavoisier. Engraved by François Séraphin Delpech, after a drawing by Belliart, after the painting by Jacques Louis David.

Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier
Historical Profile
Professor Gay-Lussac, F.R.S.: Membre de l'Institut, Professor at the University of Paris &c.

Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac
Historical Profile
John Dalton, F.R.S., engraved by William Henry Worthington after an 1814 painting by William Allen, published June 25, 1823, in Manchester and London. Note the charts with Dalton’s atomic symbols lying on the table.

John Dalton
Historical Profile
Engraving of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, after a painting by Rembrandt Peale.

Eleuthère Irénée du Pont
Historical Profile
Justus von Liebig.

Justus von Liebig and Friedrich Wöhler
Historical Profile
Portrait of Berzelius. Edgar Fahs Smith Collection, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania.

Jöns Jakob Berzelius
Historical Profile
Portrait of Jane Marcet.

Jane Marcet
Historical Profile
Our library collections span nearly six miles of shelves

Othmer Library
Research
Making Modernity

Making Modernity
Museum

Fine Art
Collections

Synthesis Book Series
Research

Collections
Collections

Archives
Collections
Science at Play Exhibit

Science at Play
Museum
Puck magazine cover, March 12, 1884.

Science, Protector of the Common Good

Distillations Article
Barnum & Bailey Poster

Strange Things

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When William Aspdin stumbled on the secret to modern concrete, it was the first and one of the few fortuitous steps in an unsteady life.

Hard-Headed Man

Distillations Article

Two Tales of Ballooning

Distillations Video
Blockade Against Blockade or John Bull a Match for Boney

The Blockade Runner

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Brave New Butter

Distillations Article

Up in the Air

Distillations Video
Neanderthal skull

Ancient DNA

Distillations Article
The line between chemistry and biology first began to blur in the 19th century. (NIAID)

Border Crossing

Distillations Article
Detail of a burlap sack for H. Kohnstamm and Company’s Simplex Soap. When recently laundered clothes started to disintegrate in the early 20th century, angry customers turned to laundries, which in turn looked to soap manufacturers, such as Kohnstamm, for

Going to Pieces: A Detective Story

Distillations Article
Joseph Wright's An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768) housed at the National Gallery, London.

Pumped Up

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Cabinets for the Curious

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Yellow Fever

Yellow Fever Fiend

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Whales in Space

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Trading cards

Where’s the Beef?

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Early Hot-Air Ballon French Postcard

Up in the Air

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St. Clair’s Defeat

Fresh Start

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English royal gardens at Kew, Richmond

No Ill Nature: The Surprising History and Science of Poison Ivy and Its Relatives

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Guano ad

Dirty Business

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Lancets and a blood collecting bowl

Let It Bleed

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Fairyland of Chemistry

Distillations Podcast
Slide Rule detail

The Golden Rule

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Ernest Solvay at the 1911 Solvay Conference

Making the Process

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Joseph Black

That Beautiful Theory

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Sir Joseph Banks

High Society

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A treatise on adulterations of food, and culinary poisons

Secret Ingredient

Distillations Article

An Everyday Poison

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Ptolemaic armillary sphere

Out of Obscurity

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A Notorious Life

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A watercolor of five surgeons participating in an amputation without anesthetic.

Painless Dreams

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Sausage formula from August Kekulé

The World Inside

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Alfred Swaine Taylor on poisons

Palmer the Poisoner

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Intubation set

Instrumental to Survival

Distillations Article
A Birmingham toast, as given on the 14th of July

Birmingham Toast

Distillations Article