Images of Modernity  10th- or 11th-century Greek alchemical
illustrations. Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs (Paris,
1888). Othmer Library, CHF.  From ancient glassmakers, pigment
grinders, and brewers to 21st-century pharmaceutical chemists,
chemical engineers, and nanotechnologists, those who have
acquired an intimate familiarity with matter and how to
manipulate it have helped provide much of the material stuff of
civilizations past and present. Often for the sheer joy of
knowing, alchemists, chemists, and today’s molecular scientists
have sought to expand humankind’s understanding of matter from
the atomic to the galactic.    Intel C4004 chip on 4004 CPU
board, 1971. Intel Corporation. CHF Collections.  As engineers
made increasingly complex circuits using individual transistors,
they began to struggle with squeezing all the components into
smaller and smaller spaces. The technological breakthrough of
the integrated circuit, or chip, helped solve this problem: the
chip’s components are etched right