Throughout its history, the long s has always looked a lot like the lowercase f, to the extent of having a little nubbin vaguely reminiscent of a crossbar appended to its middle sometimes. But the two letters are not otherwise related.

The use of two types of s dates back at least to the Middle Ages. The long s became especially popular during the Italian Renaissance, with the development of the various “humanistic” scripts that gave rise to our present English script. 

You’ll notice that the long f, though not the long s, persists in many serif fonts in the type style we now call italic, although the long s was used in so-called roman (i.e., non-slanty) fonts as well.

The form survived in the formal German script Fraktur until Fraktur itself bit the dust after World War II. The script had come to be associated with German militarism.

Source: 
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/101/why-did-18th-century-writers-use-f-inftead-of-s

…the hell?

“That wonderful production of the human mind, the undulatory theory of light, with the phenomena for which it strives to account, seems to me, who am only an experimentalist, to stand midway between what we may conceive to be the coarser mechanical actions of matter, with their explanatory philosophy, and that other branch which includes, or should include, the physical idea of forces acting at a distance; and admitting for the time the existence of the ether, I have often struggled to perceive how far that medium might account for or mingle in with such actions, generally; and to what extent experimental trials might be devised which, with their results and consequences, might contradict, confirm, enlarge, or modify the idea we form of it, always with the hope that the corrected or instructed idea would approach more and more to the truth of nature, and in the fulness of time coincide with it.”

Michael Faraday, “Experimental Relations of Gold (and other metal) to Light”, Transactions 1857

It shows up a lot in printed stuff from the 17th and 18th centuries.

(That article points out that the long s survives to this day as the integral symbol. I had never thought of that, but it’s totally true. And awesome.)

I’ve read the entire Aubry/Maturin series of novels written by Patrick O’Brian. David Maturin, a physician and “natural philosopher” (a person who studies forms of natural science) was and Jack Aubry, the Royal Navy Commander of “Master and Commander” fame were both members. I got interested in the journals because of O’Brian’s descriptions of papers mentioned in the novels. I’ve been reading very old journals since early this morning (at risk of my employment).

I can’t stop…. Only 345 year’s worth to go

Porn and list journalism has that effect on me.