Vintage Books
Believe it or not, there was a time when, instead of photographs, scientists made detailed drawings documenting the natural world. Ernst Haeckel was one such scientist/artist. Here is a collection of some of his drawings. I think they are pretty amazing!
Not all of the illustrations are in black and white or monochrome. Some are in color and very beautiful. You can find a large collection over on More Cool Pictures, and also over at Mandala Madness.
I believe they were originally published in this book:
This is a sampling of an old old mathematics book, not sure when it was published, or what the name of it is. I looked for copies the whole thing, but these were the only images I could find. As you can see this was back in the day when multiplication tables were memorized.
Here’s a page from a similar but different book. This one is in color, and has decorative borders. Notice the hand sewn binding. Very cool.
Because we like to look at the numbers!