Tucked inside a small climate-controlled vault in Southwest Research Institute’s library are hundreds of books you’d be hard pressed to find elsewhere, including a banned book by Galileo illegally reproduced in 1710.
The rare and unique book collection boasts 250 books chronicling the history of science, engineering and mathematics at SwRI’s Thomas Baker Slick Memorial Library.
SwRI is a nonprofit research and development institute founded in 1947 by the wealthy oilman, philanthropist and adventurer Tom Slick, who also founded SwRI’s biomedical counterpart and sister nonprofit, Texas Biomedical Research Institute.
The SwRI library sits in the middle of their 1,500-acre campus on the West Side of San Antonio near Culebra Road.
Some of the more notable books sit in a small display room