<i>Laboratoire et table des Raports</i>
date: label: date made
content: 1763
notes: label: Description
content: The upper part of this engraving represents a well-stocked chemical laboratory with two well-dressed men (identified in the accompanying text as a physician and a chemist) and four workers. The lower part is an affinity table-showing the relative disposition of various substances to unite with one another-that was copied almost directly from the table that the French chemist Étienne-François Geoffroy had published in 1718. While the chemical symbols used in this table would soon be displaced by those introduced by Antoine Lavoisier and his collaborators, this image indicates the robust tradition of systematically studying the relationships among chemical substances that was well established in France, and elsewhere, by the early 18th century.
label: Description
content: This engraving was the first of the “Chimie” plates in vol. 3 of the <i>Recueil de Planches, sur les sciences, les arts libéraux, et les arts méchaniques</i> (Paris, 1763). The illustrations formed a key part of the <i>Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers</i> organized by Denis Diderot and other philosophes. This image is unnumbered and, unlike the other plates in this series, it extends over two pages.
label: Description
content: The signatures at the bottom of the image read “Goussier del” and “Prevost fecit.” Jacques-Louis Goussier (1722-1729) drew more than 900 plates for the <i>Encyclopédie</i>. Benoit Louis Prevost engraved many plates for this work.
label: Description
content: Ref: Charles C. Gillispie, ed., <i>A Diderot Pictorial Encyclopedia of Trades and Industry</i> (New York, 1993).
label: Description
content: Mi Gyung Kim, <i>Affinity, That Elusive Dream</i> (Cambridge, Mass., 2003), p. 136.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: France: Île-de-France, Paris
topic: label: Subject
content: Chemistry
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
label: See more items in
content: Science & Mathematics
label: See more items in
content: Prints from the Physical Sciences Collection
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.319743.01
label: catalog number
content: 319743.01
label: accession number
content: 239020
objectType: label: Object Name
content: print
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: paper (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 15 3/4 in x 19 in; 40.005 cm x 48.26 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall in mat: 20 1/4 in x 23 in x 1/8 in; 51.435 cm x 58.42 cm x .3175 cm