GoKawiilVintage scientific papers with LaTeX
Twenty small examples show independent mechanisms behind a convincing old-scientific-paper aesthetic. Each file is deliberately standalone: copy one, compile it, and remove individual effects to see what they contribute.
The examples fall into three groups: pure LaTeX pages (1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 10 to 14), standalone fiziko MetaPost figures (3, 7, 8, 9), and LaTeX pages with fiziko figures drawn inside them by LuaTeX's built-in MetaPost (15 to 20).
Gallery
Low-resolution previews of the compiled output; the PDFs themselves are vector and searchable.
01 early modern page 02 engraved optics plate 03 Hooke apparatus 04 ornamented incipit 05 Victorian newspaper 06 natural history catalogue 07 lens rays 08 Atwood machine 09 shading atlas 10 table of logarithms 11 circumpolar star chart 12 snow-crystal micrographs 13 cooling curve 14 patent drawing sheet 15 inclined plane 16 telescope plate 17 terrestrial globe 18 mechanics primer 19 knots plate 20 phases of the moon
The examples
01-early-modern-page.tex -- OpenType old-style figures and historical ligatures, an explicit long s, warm paper and ink colors, asymmetric margins, a drop capital, spaced small capitals, marginalia, and printer's rules. 02-engraved-optics-plate.tex -- deterministic irregular strokes and line hatching in TikZ, with labels kept as real searchable text. 03-fiziko-hooke-apparatus.mp -- a compact Hooke apparatus drawn with the external fiziko MetaPost library: hatched support, modeled spring, hanging weight, and measured extension. 04-ornamented-incipit.tex -- an A5 early-scientific title page with a boxed three-line initial and a small vector ornament made from ordinary TikZ paths. 05-victorian-newspaper.tex -- a compact square broadsheet with a masthead, balanced columns, rule between columns, pull quotation, article heads, and meteorological register. 06-natural-history-catalogue.tex -- a museum catalogue page using hanging entries, dot leaders, explicit typographic roles, and old-style numeric data. 07-fiziko-lens-rays.mp -- a glass lens whose ray paths are computed by fiziko's refraction macro rather than drawn to a predetermined focal point. 08-fiziko-atwood-machine.mp -- an Atwood machine composed from a hatched support, shaded pulley, curved rope, hanging weights, and acceleration arrow. 09-fiziko-shading-atlas.mp -- a side-by-side comparison of line shading, stippling, and a variable-width shaded tube. 10-lua-table-of-logarithms.tex -- a five-place table of logarithms whose every digit is computed by a Lua function at compile time, set in lining tabular figures with the ruling of a nineteenth-century table. 11-circumpolar-star-chart.tex -- a polar star chart: one macro converts right ascension and declination to chart coordinates for thirty-four catalogued stars, hour circles lettered in roman numerals, and magnitude-graded discs. 12-snow-crystal-micrographs.tex -- four circular microscope fields; the crystals are grown by TikZ Lindenmayer-system grammars, with six rotated copies of one arm supplying the hexagonal symmetry. 13-cooling-curve-graph-paper.tex -- a pgfplots chart on sepia graph paper with inward ticks, open-circle plotting symbols, a hand-fitted curve, and an italic marginal remark. 14-patent-drawing-sheet.tex -- a patent-office plate of a centrifugal governor: numbered leader lines, sections hatched at forty-five degrees, engraved balls, and witness and inventor signature lines. 15-fiziko-inclined-plane.tex -- a treatise page whose figure is drawn by fiziko inside LuaLaTeX: a wooden wedge, a shaded ball, and the weight resolved along and normal to the slope, with labels set in the page's own text and math fonts. 16-fiziko-telescope-plate.tex -- a Keplerian telescope in which every ray is refracted by fiziko's tracing macro; the focus and the exit pupil, where the eye is placed, are found where computed rays cross the axis. 17-fiziko-terrestrial-globe.tex -- the earth from three stations using fiziko's globe with its built-in coastlines, plus a border row of small globes turned by equal steps. 18-fiziko-mechanics-primer.tex -- a two-column chapter with a loaded cart, a lever in balance, and a pendulum, each drawn in place in its column. 19-fiziko-knots-plate.tex -- trefoil, cinquefoil, and septafoil cords from one formula each, with fiziko finding the crossings and shading the rope. 20-fiziko-phases-of-the-moon.tex -- the moon in eight orbital positions under one fixed light, and the same eight phases as seen from the earth by turning the light about a fixed sphere.
The .tex files compile independently with LuaLaTeX. The .mp files are standalone MetaPost sources with fiziko as an explicit external dependency. Examples 15 to 20 need both: they are LuaLaTeX documents that load fiziko through luamplib .
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