Commercium philosophico-technicum, or, The philosophical commerce of arts : designed as an attempt to improve arts, trades, and manufactures
A London treatise of 1763 by William Lewis, with plates printed by Henry Baldwin and sold by Robert Willock, setting out the technical arts of its day for artisans and manufacturers seeking improvement. The copperplate pictures are engraved cross-sections and elevations of furnaces, retorts, and crucibles drawn in clean hatched line, with plate numbers in the upper corners. A designer might take their precise, schematic line work and orderly grid of parts as a model for technical diagrams, labelled apparatus layouts, or vintage engineering graphics.
