Every so often I like to strap on an oxygen tank and go archive diving into the depths of the German Natural History Museum sifting through the extensive legacy of the renowned microscopist, Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg. Beyond his published works, some of which have been featured here previously (see below), three thousand of Ehrenberg's original illustrations have been saved and digitised in high resolution format - but the material is only available as very large image files.
I can't believe it has taken me this long to develop a new downloading trick -- I start off eight or ten random file downloads (it's essentially blind fishing) and then keep an eye on the thumbnails that appear in the target folder. These mini-images tend to be visible immediately after the download commences. That way I can quickly terminate any in the queue that, for one reason or another, aren't as desirable. [... a 'note to self' for the future]
Despite this hallelujah revelation, I probably downloaded half a gigabyte of data by taking a cross section sampling from only six hundred out of the three thousand drawings available. (for anyone
Image dates on the sketch pages seem to be mostly from the 1830s, although there are a couple from the 1880s.
For more information about Ehrenberg and (more images from) his seminal contributions to the worlds of microgeology, micropaleontology, rotifera, radiolaria and diatoms, see in order:
All of the above images were reduced in size by about two thirds (they are still roughly 2000 x 1500px) and uploaded to Webshots - the Webshots album has more than twenty further images in addition to those you see here.
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