A First Alphabet of Missing "Firsts" in Art

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

Keeping track of the first time something appears in a reproduced form is an interesting and perhaps useful exercise...well, it is at least diverting and occasionally helpful in connecting a few other disparate bits. I've wondered about some of this throughout the course of the blog, like the first time the Sun appears with a smiling face, and the first appearance in print of the spectrum of a star other than the Sun, or the first appearance of a portrait of Einstein (or Newton, or Goedel, or Feynman, or FDR), and so on.

Sitting in the airport parting lot and waiting on the arrival of a plane (and after seeing a very unexpected flyby of a number of Sikorsky Super Stallions) I thought about what might be unusual objects and when it was that they first appeared in art, and organized them alphabetically. For example, when did an Adding machine of any sort make an appearance in a work of art? A Barking dog? A Crutch or cane, and then a broken crutch or cane?  A Dinosaur? (Or dead horse?)  An Eclipse? A Fork? (Also the representation of human Frailty?) A Girl, a House on Fire, an Incision, a Jail?  When does a Kitchen appear (though this may be one of the easiest to answer)? Where do we find the first Library depicted in art, or the first Microscope? When does the first Nighttime scene appear? How about the first image in art displaying the law of Octaves, or Pi, or a Quagmire, or a Ripple in a stream? And when does the first Stirrup show up, and the first Signature of an artist, or the first Toothless Smile? And what about leafless Trees, and Underwater scenes? When do we see the first Visions or dreams enter the artistic landscape, or the first Wire, or Yawn, or the number Zero? 

So there you have it. If you have any answers to these questions, please do share, as I don't have the answers (though I have some guesses, or approximations of a time period).  Probably there are some quickish responses for the first signed artwork, and the first appearances of the fork, and stirrup, and microscope. We'll see.