Thomas Wright

 Taken from Public Domain Review:

“I own I can never look upon the Stars without wondering why the whole World does not become Astronomers”. So admits Thomas Wright in An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe (1750). Written in the form of nine letters to a nameless friend, the book puts forwards “my Theory of the Universe, and the Ideas I have form’d of the known Creation.”

In a manuscript sequel to An Original Theory, he proposed “that the sky was solid and studied with inward-pointing volcanoes down whose shafts we see the stars”.

The thirty-two “graven and mezzotinto” plates found at the end of An Original Theory — printed “by the Best Masters” and likely based on Wright's drawings — reveal his remarkable range of vision.