Intricate printed type text, with various shapes shown next to it

Euclid’s Elementa Geometriae

Detail of Hunt-Lenox globe, crafted of copper ca. 1508

Book illustration titled “Chemistry of Combustion and Illumination; Structure of Flame,” with a large outline of a flame and candle in black and red. The flame is filled with small black squares and surrounded on the outside with squares of black and shades of red, with each color keyed to represent a specific chemical component

Edward Livingston Youmans (1821–1887)
Chemical Atlas; or, The Chemistry of Familiar Objects ...
New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1855
Rare Book Division

Chemical Atlas; or, The Chemistry of Familiar

Objects ...

Edward Livingston Youmans, the founder of Popular Science magazine, originally published the Chemical Atlas in 1854 as an introductory chemistry text designed for students who had no previous chemical knowledge. Today it is regarded as a remarkable example of mid-19th-century American scientific book printing and information design. Published about 14 years before Dmitri Mendeleev created the first version of the periodic table, the Chemical Atlas contains various illustrations in which the elements and principles of chemistry are represented by colored diagrams and symbols, depicting possible relationships and reactions between the elements. The book was a pioneering publication in the use of color to convey quantitative information. It is emblematic of Youmans’s dedication to the dissemination of scientific knowledge in inventive ways that the layperson could more easily understand.

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