Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects. The image featured on the cover of The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog is an alchemist. Alchemy, the precursor of modern chemistry, first appeared around 100 AD in Alexandria, Egypt -- a product of the fusion of Greek and Oriental culture. The goal of this philosophic science was to achieve the transmutation of base metals into gold, regarded as the most perfect of metals.
Alchemy was based on three key precepts. The first was Aristotle's teachings that the basis for all material objects could be found in the four elements: fire, water, air, and earth. By altering the proportions in which the qualities were combined, elements could be changed into one another. The second precept arose from the philosophic thought of the time: metals, like all other substances, could be converted into one another. The third precept was taken from astrology: metals, like plants and animals, could be born, nourished, and caused to grow through imperfect stages into a final, perfect form.
Early alchemists were generally from artisan classes. As alchemy gained adherents, philosophers became more involved, and the cryptic language used by the early artisan-alchemists to protect trade secrets became virtually its own language with symbols and fanciful terms. Over the centuries, the language of alchemy became ever more complex, reaching its height in Medieval Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Alchemy was superseded by the advent of modern chemistry at the end of the eighteenth century. Edie Freedman designed this cover using an image adapted from a nineteenth century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. The cover design was created in QuarkXPress.
The inside formats were implemented in sqtroff by Lenny Muellner. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and ITC Garamond Book. The illustrations that appear in the book are a combination of figures created by Chris Reilley, and wood engravings from the Dover Pictorial Archive and the Ron Yablon Graphic Archives. They were created using Adobe Photoshop and Aldus Freehand.
