Blank and Missing Things Thread #55: Missing Motion

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 832  Blog Bookstore

 A History of Blank and Missing Things Thread #55

This lovely and lonely engraving comes from Vincent Wing’s (1643-1726)  Geodaetes practicus Redivius¹ (The Art of Surveying…), a book printed in London in 1700.  It is a classic work and much used for over a hundred years—but I’m focused solely in this illustration for triangulating in the woods.  It is the image of a stationary forest, a collection of neat trees devoid of movement and motion and mission, a collection of solitaries, missing wind.  I find it remarkable for being an illustration that manages to show the missing things that you cannot really see. 

 

1. The full title of this work:  Geodaetes practicus redivivus, the art of surveying: formerly publish'd by Vincent Wing, math., now much augmented and improv'd, with an appendix thereunto subjoin'd, shewing the whole art of surveying by a new instrument, called the emperial table : performing exactly in all respects, and in all cases that can possibly happen in the practical part of surveying, the work of the theodolite, circumserentor, semi-circle, chard and needle : with the description and use of a new quadrant : to which is added by way of supplement, scientia stellarum, containing new and accurate tables of the planetary motions, whereby the planets places both in longitude and latitude, the places of the fixed stars, with the eclipses of the luminaries, are more easily attain'd, than by any yet extant / by John Wing