Images

Cast of the skull (KNM-ER 1470) of Homo rudolfensis. The original specimen was found at Koobi Fora in Kenya by Bernard Ngeneo (a member of Richard Leakey's team) in 1972. The skull is c. 2 million years old. David H. Koch Hall of Human...

The Red Wharf Bay hoard of silver 'broad-band' arm rings, c. 900-925. Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales.

Hercules and Cerberus, oil on canvas by Peter Paul Rubens, 1636. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

An image representing the constellation of Hercules in the Firmamentum Sobiescianum, sive uranographia contained in the Prodromus Astronomiae.

Athena, Hercules, and a two-headed Cerberus, with a mane down his necks and back. Hermes (not shown in the photograph) stands to the left of Athena. Attic black-figure amphora from Kameiros (Rhodes), c. 510 BCE. Louvre, Paris.

Vulcan surprising Venus and Mars in bed before an assembly of the gods, oil on canvas by Johann Heiss, 1679.

The Birth of Minerva, oil on canvas by René-Antoine Houasse, 1688. Palace of Versailles.

Vulcan's Forge, oil on panel by Cornelis Schut, between 1617 and 1655. Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

An advertisement for Goodyear rubber tyres from 1920. Vulcanised rubber was invented by Charles Goodyear (1800-60) in the United States in 1839 and patented in 1844. Rubber had long been used for its flexibility and softness but Goodyear...

The Difference Engine was invented by the Englishman Charles Babbage (1791-1871) in 1822. This example is a modern model of Babbage's Mark II, designed c. 1848. Like most other inventions of the Industrial Revolution, Babbage built on the...