A growing collection · public domain & free to share
Foundational papers,
one page each.
Each text is laid out on a single poster, with its sections, equations, tables and references, and its figures redrawn as vector graphics. Print them, frame them, hang them.
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Vector PDF · A0 to A3 · 50 × 70 cm · 60 × 80 cm · 4 themes
The collection
100 posters in 13 categories, from c. 400 BC to 2026, each a free PDF to print and frame.
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Cryptocurrency
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)
National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2001
Specifies the AES block cipher: the state, its four round transformations with the S-box, and the key expansion.
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Cryptocurrency
Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
Satoshi Nakamoto, 2008
Proposes a peer-to-peer electronic cash system that prevents double-spending with a proof-of-work chain of timestamped blocks.
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Cryptocurrency
The Genesis Block
Satoshi Nakamoto, 2009
The 285 bytes of the first Bitcoin block, in hexadecimal, with every field of its header and coinbase transaction labelled.
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Cryptocurrency
PPCoin: Peer-to-Peer Crypto-Currency with Proof-of-Stake
Sunny King, Scott Nadal, 2012
Proposes a crypto-currency derived from Bitcoin in which proof-of-stake, based on coin age, provides most of the network security.
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Cryptocurrency
BIP 39: Mnemonic code for generating deterministic keys
Marek Palatinus and 3 others, 2013
Encodes entropy as a sentence of words from a 2048-word list, shown in full, then derives a binary seed.
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Cryptocurrency
Ethereum: A Next-Generation Smart Contract and Decentralized Application Platform
Vitalik Buterin, 2014
Proposes Ethereum, a blockchain with a built-in Turing-complete language for contracts that encode arbitrary state transition functions.
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Cryptocurrency
Secure Hash Standard (SHS): SHA-256
National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2015
Specifies SHA-256: its functions, constants, message padding and parsing, initial hash value and hash computation.
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Cryptocurrency
BIP 173: Base32 address format for native v0-16 witness outputs
Pieter Wuille, Greg Maxwell, 2017
Defines Bech32, a checksummed base32 format, and the segwit addresses built on it, starting with bc1.
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Cryptocurrency
BIP 340: Schnorr Signatures for secp256k1
Pieter Wuille, Jonas Nick, Tim Ruffing, 2020
Specifies 64-byte Schnorr signatures and 32-byte public keys over the secp256k1 curve, with batch verification.
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Cryptocurrency
NIP-01: Basic protocol flow description
fiatjaf, 2022
Defines the Nostr event, its signed JSON serialization, tags, kinds, and the messages between clients and relays.
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Computing pioneers
Leibniz: Explication de l’arithmétique binaire
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1703
Leibniz’s 1703 memoir presenting base-two arithmetic with 0 and 1, its tables, and the Fohy trigrams.
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Computing pioneers
Sketch of the Analytical Engine: Note G
Ada Lovelace, 1843
Lovelace’s last note on the Analytical Engine: its limits, and how it would compute the Bernoulli numbers.
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Computing pioneers
RFC 20: ASCII format for Network Interchange
Vint Cerf, 1969
Vint Cerf’s 1969 proposal to use 7-bit ASCII on the ARPA network, with the code table of the USA standard.
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Internet & networking
RFC 1: Host Software
Steve Crocker, 1969
The first Request for Comments: the planned host software of the ARPA Network and its first experiments.
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Internet & networking
RFC 791: Internet Protocol
Jon Postel, 1981
Section 3.1 of the Internet Protocol specification, which defines each field of the IPv4 header and its options.
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Internet & networking
RFC 793: Transmission Control Protocol
Jon Postel, 1981
Section 3.1 of the Transmission Control Protocol specification, which defines each field of the TCP header and its options.
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Internet & networking
RFC 968: ‘Twas the Night Before Start-up
Vint Cerf, 1985
Vint Cerf’s poem on debugging a new network the night before it is brought into operation.
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Internet & networking
RFC 1087: Ethics and the Internet
Internet Activities Board, 1989
A 1989 policy statement of the Internet Activities Board naming the uses of the Internet it considers unethical.
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Internet & networking
RFC 1149: A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers
David Waitzman, 1990
An April Fools’ RFC on sending IP datagrams printed on a paper scroll wrapped around the leg of a bird.
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Internet & networking
RFC 1925: The Twelve Networking Truths
Ross Callon, 1996
An April Fools’ RFC stating twelve fundamental truths of networking, several with corollaries.
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Internet & networking
RFC 2119: Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels
Scott Bradner, 1997
The Best Current Practice that defines MUST, SHOULD, MAY and related key words for requirement levels in specifications.
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Internet & networking
RFC 2324: Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0)
Larry Masinter, 1998
An April Fools’ RFC extending HTTP to control coffee pots; it defined the 418 I’m a teapot status code.
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Internet & networking
RFC 2549: IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service
David Waitzman, 1999
An April Fools’ RFC amending RFC 1149 with quality of service levels for IP datagrams carried by birds.
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Internet & networking
RFC 2795: The Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite (IMPS)
S. Christey, 2000
An April Fools’ RFC specifying protocols for infinite monkeys at typewriters, their zoos, bards and critics.
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Internet & networking
RFC 6214: Adaptation of RFC 1149 for IPv6
Brian Carpenter, Robert M. Hinden, 2011
An April Fools’ RFC adapting the transmission of IP datagrams by avian carriers to IPv6.
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Software practice
RFC 761: The Robustness Principle
Jon Postel, 1980
The philosophy chapter of the 1980 TCP specification, which ends with the principle: be conservative in what you do.
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Software practice
The GNU Manifesto
Richard Stallman, 1985
Richard Stallman’s 1985 call for support to write GNU, a complete Unix-compatible system that everyone may share and change.
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Software practice
GNU General Public License, Version 2
Free Software Foundation, 1991
The Free Software Foundation license of 1991 letting anyone copy, change and share a program, provided derived works keep it.
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Software practice
What is Free Software? The Free Software Definition
Free Software Foundation, 1996
The GNU Project’s criteria for free software: the four freedoms to run, study and change, redistribute, and share changes.
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Software practice
Manifesto for Agile Software Development
Kent Beck and 16 others, 2001
Four values for developing software, stated in 2001 by seventeen people who met at Snowbird, Utah.
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Software practice
PEP 20: The Zen of Python
Tim Peters, 2004
Nineteen aphorisms by Tim Peters on the principles behind the design of the Python language.
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Software practice
The Open Source Definition
Open Source Initiative, 2007
The ten criteria that the distribution terms of a software license must meet to be called open source.
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Software practice
The Twelve-Factor App
Adam Wiggins, 2011
A methodology of twelve factors for building software-as-a-service apps, drawn from experience with hundreds of apps on Heroku.
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Software practice
Semantic Versioning 2.0.0
Tom Preston-Werner, 2013
Rules and requirements that dictate how MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH version numbers are assigned and incremented, with a grammar and a FAQ.
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Software practice
Conventional Commits 1.0.0
Conventional Commits contributors, 2019
A specification for structuring commit messages so that tools can derive changelogs and semantic version bumps from them.
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Software practice
Keep a Changelog 1.1.0
Olivier Lacan, 2019
Guiding principles for a changelog written for humans: one entry per version, grouped types of changes, latest first.
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Manifestos & announcements
WorldWideWeb: the announcement on alt.hypertext
Tim Berners-Lee, 1991
Tim Berners-Lee’s two Usenet posts of 6 August 1991 that described the WorldWideWeb project and offered its software.
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Manifestos & announcements
A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
John Perry Barlow, 1996
John Perry Barlow’s 1996 declaration, written at Davos, that governments have no sovereignty over cyberspace.
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Physics & astronomy
Sidereus Nuncius: the Moon
Galileo Galilei, 1610
Galileo’s telescopic observations of the Moon’s surface, mountains and earthshine, with his five etchings, from the 1610 edition.
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Physics & astronomy
Axiomata, sive Leges Motus
Isaac Newton, 1687
Newton states the three laws of motion, derives six corollaries from them and reports pendulum collision experiments.
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Physics & astronomy
Catalogue des Nébuleuses et des amas d’Étoiles
Charles Messier, 1781
Charles Messier’s catalogue of 103 nebulae, star clusters and other objects observed from Paris, with positions and descriptions.
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Physics & astronomy
On the Relative Motion of the Earth and the Luminiferous Ether
Albert A. Michelson, Edward W. Morley, 1887
An interferometer turning on a stone floating on mercury detects no appreciable motion of the earth relative to the ether.
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Physics & astronomy
Ueber eine neue Art von Strahlen
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, 1895
Röntgen reports a new kind of rays that cross opaque bodies, blacken photographic plates and show the hand bones.
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Physics & astronomy
Sur une substance nouvelle radio-active, contenue dans la pechblende
Pierre Curie, Marie Curie, 1898
The Curies separate from pitchblende a substance far more active than uranium and name its presumed new metal polonium.
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Physics & astronomy
Zur Theorie des Gesetzes der Energieverteilung im Normalspectrum
Max Planck, 1900
Planck derives the spectral energy distribution by dividing resonator energy into finite elements hν and counting complexions.
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Physics & astronomy
Ist die Trägheit eines Körpers von seinem Energieinhalt abhängig?
Albert Einstein, 1905
Shows that a body emitting energy L as radiation loses mass L/V², so its mass measures its energy content.
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Physics & astronomy
Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper
Albert Einstein, 1905
Derives special relativity from the relativity principle and the constant speed of light, and applies it to electrodynamics and optics.
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Physics & astronomy
Über die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Wärme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen
Albert Einstein, 1905
Einstein derives the random motion of particles suspended in a liquid and relates their mean displacement to diffusion.
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Physics & astronomy
Über einen die Erzeugung und Verwandlung des Lichtes betreffenden heuristischen Gesichtspunkt
Albert Einstein, 1905
Einstein proposes that light consists of energy quanta, and applies this to the Stokes rule, photoelectric effect and photoionization.
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Physics & astronomy
A Relation between Distance and Radial Velocity among Extra-Galactic Nebulae
Edwin Hubble, 1929
Finds a roughly linear relation between the distances of extra-galactic nebulae and their radial velocities.
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Space exploration
Исследование мировых пространств реактивными приборами
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, 1926
Tsiolkovsky derives the speed of a rocket in empty space from the mass of its propellant: the rocket equation.
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Space exploration
Apollo 11 Technical Air-to-Ground Voice Transcription: the landing
NASA Manned Spacecraft Center, 1969
NASA’s transcript of the radio exchanges between Houston and Eagle from powered descent to the landing on the Moon.
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Space exploration
The Voyager Golden Record: the cover
NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 1977
The engraved cover of the record carried by Voyager 1 and 2, with a notice on each of its diagrams.
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Mathematics
Euclid’s Elements, Book I: definitions, postulates and common notions
Euclid, c. 300 BC
The 23 definitions, five postulates and common notions that open Euclid’s Elements, in Heiberg’s Greek text.
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Mathematics
Traitté du Triangle Arithmetique
Blaise Pascal, 1665
Excerpt of Pascal’s treatise on the arithmetical triangle: its construction, the rule of its numbers and the first consequence.
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Mathematics
Observatio Domini Petri de Fermat
Pierre de Fermat, 1670
Fermat’s note that no cube or higher power splits into two like powers, with the question of Diophantus it annotates.
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Mathematics
Solutio problematis ad geometriam situs pertinentis
Leonhard Euler, 1736
Euler shows that no walk crosses each of the seven bridges of Königsberg exactly once, and gives the general rule.
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Mathematics
Lettre de Galois à M. Auguste Chevalier
Évariste Galois, 1832
Dated 29 May 1832, two days before his death, Galois’s letter summarizes his work on equations, groups and algebraic integrals.
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Mathematics
Ueber die Anzahl der Primzahlen unter einer gegebenen Grösse
Bernhard Riemann, 1859
Extends the zeta function to complex values, relates its zeros to the count of primes and states the Riemann hypothesis.
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Mathematics
Ueber eine elementare Frage der Mannigfaltigkeitslehre
Georg Cantor, 1891
Cantor’s diagonal argument: the sequences of two symbols cannot be listed, and no set has the greatest cardinality.
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Mathematics
Mathematische Probleme
David Hilbert, 1900
Excerpt of the printed text of Hilbert’s 1900 Paris lecture, which sets out 23 problems for the new century.
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Mathematics
Letter to G. H. Hardy, 16 January 1913
Srinivasa Ramanujan, 1913
Ramanujan, a clerk in Madras, introduces himself to Hardy and sends him his theorems.
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Biology & medicine
The Hippocratic Oath
Hippocrates, c. 400 BC
The physician’s oath of the Hippocratic Collection, in the ancient Greek text edited by Émile Littré in 1844.
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Biology & medicine
Caroli Linnæi Regnum Animale
Carl Linnaeus, 1735
The animal kingdom table of the first edition of Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae, 1735, with its six classes and its paradoxes.
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Biology & medicine
An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolæ Vaccinæ
Edward Jenner, 1798
Cases XVI and XVII of Jenner’s 1798 Inquiry: a boy inoculated with cow pox in 1796 resisted smallpox inoculation.
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Biology & medicine
On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection
Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, 1858
Darwin’s and Wallace’s papers on natural selection, read together at the Linnean Society on 1 July 1858.
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Biology & medicine
Versuche über Pflanzen-Hybriden
Gregor Mendel, 1866
Gregor Mendel’s 1866 paper on crosses of garden peas, which set out the laws of inheritance.
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Biology & medicine
On the Antibacterial Action of Cultures of a Penicillium, with Special Reference to their Use in the Isolation of B. influenzæ
Alexander Fleming, 1929
Alexander Fleming’s 1929 paper on penicillin, the antibacterial substance made by a mould in broth cultures.
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Historical data visualization
Edmond Halley: An Historical Account of the Trade Winds, and Monsoons
Edmond Halley, 1686
Halley’s 1686 account of the trade winds and monsoons, with his map of the winds between and near the tropics.
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Historical data visualization
William Playfair: The Commercial and Political Atlas
William Playfair, 1786
Two 1786 charts by William Playfair: trade with Denmark and Norway over time, and Scotland’s trade as bars.
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Historical data visualization
John Snow: the Broad Street cholera map
John Snow, 1854
John Snow’s map of the 1854 cholera deaths around Broad Street, which pointed to a single public water pump.
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Historical data visualization
Florence Nightingale: Diagram of the Causes of Mortality in the Army in the East
Florence Nightingale, 1858
Florence Nightingale’s 1858 diagram of the British army’s monthly deaths in the East, from disease, wounds and other causes.
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Historical data visualization
Charles Joseph Minard: Carte figurative des pertes successives en hommes de l’Armée Française dans la campagne de Russie 1812-1813
Charles Joseph Minard, 1869
Minard’s 1869 map of the French army in Russia in 1812-1813, its width drawn to scale of the men left.
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Historical data visualization
Опыт системы элементов, основанной на их атомном весе и химическом сходстве
Dmitri Mendeleev, 1869
Mendeleev’s system of the elements by atomic weight, sent to chemists in February 1869, with the conclusions of his paper.
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Historical data visualization
Ernst Haeckel: Stammbaum des Menschen
Ernst Haeckel, 1874
Ernst Haeckel’s 1874 tree of the descent of man, from the Moneren to the Menschen, plate XII of his Anthropogenie.
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Patents
Abraham Lincoln: Buoying Vessels over Shoals, US Patent 6,469
Abraham Lincoln, 1849
Lincoln’s patent for expansible buoyant air chambers that lessen a vessel’s draught to carry it over bars and shallows.
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Patents
Alexander Graham Bell: Improvement in Telegraphy, US Patent 174,465
Alexander Graham Bell, 1876
Bell’s patent for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically by undulatory electric currents.
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Patents
Thomas A. Edison: Electric-Lamp, US Patent 223,898
Thomas A. Edison, 1880
Edison’s patent for an incandescent lamp with a high-resistance carbon filament in a sealed, evacuated glass bulb.
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Patents
Nikola Tesla: Electro-Magnetic Motor, US Patent 381,968
Nikola Tesla, 1888
Tesla’s patent for a motor turned by poles shifted around its field by alternating currents in independent circuits.
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Patents
Herman Hollerith: Art of Compiling Statistics, US Patent 395,782
Herman Hollerith, 1889
Hollerith’s patent for recording census data as holes in paper and counting them by electric circuits.
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Patents
Orville and Wilbur Wright: Flying-Machine, US Patent 821,393
Orville Wright, Wilbur Wright, 1906
The Wrights’ patent for a biplane balanced by warping its wings, with front horizontal and rear vertical rudders.
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Patents
John Bardeen and Walter H. Brattain: Three-Electrode Circuit Element Utilizing Semiconductive Materials, US Patent 2,524,035
John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain, 1950
Bardeen and Brattain’s patent for the point-contact transistor, a germanium block amplifying through emitter and collector contacts.
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Patents
Jack S. Kilby: Miniaturized Electronic Circuits, US Patent 3,138,743
Jack S. Kilby, 1964
Kilby’s patent for an integrated circuit, with all its components formed in a single wafer of semiconductor.
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Patents
Douglas C. Engelbart: X–Y Position Indicator for a Display System, US Patent 3,541,541
Douglas C. Engelbart, 1970
Engelbart’s patent for a hand-held position indicator whose two perpendicular wheels move a cursor on a computer display.
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History & philosophy
Magna Carta
King John of England, 1215
The charter of liberties granted by King John to the barons of England at Runnymede in June 1215.
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History & philosophy
Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum
Martin Luther, 1517
Luther’s ninety-five Latin theses against the preaching of indulgences, proposed for a disputation at Wittenberg in 1517.
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History & philosophy
Pensées: Grandeur de l’homme
Blaise Pascal, 1670
Pascal’s fragment on man as a thinking reed, whose whole dignity lies in thought.
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History & philosophy
The Declaration of Independence
Thomas Jefferson, Second Continental Congress, 1776
The Continental Congress declares the thirteen colonies independent of Great Britain and lists their grievances against the King.
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History & philosophy
Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?
Immanuel Kant, 1784
Kant’s essay defining enlightenment as man’s emergence from self-incurred immaturity and defending the free public use of reason.
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History & philosophy
Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen de 1789
Assemblée nationale, 1789
The preamble and seventeen articles of rights adopted by the French National Assembly in August 1789.
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History & philosophy
Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne
Olympe de Gouges, 1791
Olympe de Gouges’s seventeen articles on the rights of woman, modelled on the Declaration of 1789, with a postamble.
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History & philosophy
The Bill of Rights
First Congress of the United States, 1791
The first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States, ratified on December 15, 1791.
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History & philosophy
Décret relatif à l’abolition de l’esclavage dans les colonies et possessions françaises
Gouvernement provisoire de la République française, 1848
The French Provisional Government abolishes slavery in all French colonies and possessions and forbids French citizens to own slaves.
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History & philosophy
The Emancipation Proclamation
Abraham Lincoln, 1863
Lincoln’s proclamation declaring free the persons held as slaves within the States then in rebellion.
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History & philosophy
The Gettysburg Address
Abraham Lincoln, 1863
Lincoln’s address at the dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg, in the final text he wrote out in 1864.
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History & philosophy
Address at Rice University on the Nation’s Space Effort
John F. Kennedy, 1962
President Kennedy explains why the United States chooses to go to the Moon in this decade.
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Reference sheets
ASCII: USA Standard Code for Information Interchange
Vint Cerf, 1969
The 128 codes of 7-bit ASCII with their decimal and hexadecimal values and names, as RFC 20 gives them.
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Reference sheets
The SI Base Units
Bureau International des Poids et Mesures, 2019
The seven defining constants of the SI and the definitions of its seven base units, from the SI Brochure.
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Reference sheets
HTTP Status Codes
Roy T. Fielding and 3 others, 2022
Every status code of the IANA HTTP registry with its reason phrase, and the definitions of RFC 9110.
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Reference sheets
Phonetic Alphabet and Morse Code
Federal Aviation Administration, 2026
The ICAO phonetic alphabet with the Morse code of each letter and figure, from the FAA’s Aeronautical Information Manual.
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i.
Every word, verbatim
Every text comes from a primary source or a reference edition, and its words are counted against it; an excerpt says so on the poster.
ii.
Made to be printed
Text, equations and figures are vector graphics, so every PDF prints sharp at any size.
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Open, and free
Every text is in the public domain or under a license that allows its redistribution, and the code of the engine is MIT.