Athanasius Kircher

The flying turtles of Henan from China Illustrata.

One of the sources I used about Kircher is now available online. Beyond his ideas about organizing knowledge and automating art, his books are just a kick to look through. They're almost like illustrations for encyclopedia articles, but then you see a dragon, or a ladder to the center of the earth, or a mountain in the shape of a man.

Athanasius Kircher: A Rennaissance Man and the Quest for Lost Knowledge

This section of the Wikipedia article on him contains links to several of his manuscripts.