Orbis Pictus, or Orbis Sensualium Pictus (The Visible World in Pictures) is a textbook for children by a Czech educator Jan Ámos Komenský. It is a kind of a children's encyclopaedia and considered to be the first picture book intended for children.

Contents

The book is divided into chapters illustrated by woodcuts, which are described in the accompanying text. The book has 150 chapters and covers a wide range of subjects:

• inanimate nature
• botanics
• zoology
• religion
• humans and their activities

History

Originally published Latin-German in 1658 in Nuremberg, the book soon spread to schools in Germany and other countries. The first English edition was published in 1659. The first quadrilingual edition (in Latin, German, Italian and French) was published in 1666. First Czech translation was published in the 1685 quadrilingual edition (together with Latin, German and Hungarian). In the years 1670 – 1780, more reeditions were published in various languages, with upgraded both pictures and text content.

Conclusion

Orbis Pictus had a long-lasting influence on children education and later led to using audiovisual techniques in the classroom.

External links

Online Orbis Pictus in Latin