Category: Science & Technology

BINNEY & PEARCE (Eds)

BINNEY, Marcus, and David PEARCE (Eds). Railway Architecture. Written by members and associates of SAVE Britain’s Heritage

London, Bloomsbury Books, 1985.

£25

4to. 256 p., richly illustrated with b&w facsimile photographs. hardback, black buckram and gilt title to spine. original illustrated dust jacket. An excellent copy.

SMITH, David Eugene

SMITH, David Eugene. Rara Arithmetica. A Catalogue of the Arithmetics written before the Year MDCI with a Description of those in the Library of George Arthur Plimpton of New York by David Eugene Smith of Teachers College Columbia University

Boston and London, Ginn and Company Publishers, 1908.

£300

8vo. 507 p., ill., with 9 plates, including frontispiece. A presentation copy singed by Plimpton on recto of upper free endpaper. Blue buckram and printed paper title label to spine. A fine copy with deckled edges, a few leaves still uncut and very minimal age toning.

THOMAS-STANFORD, Charles

THOMAS-STANFORD, Charles. Early Editions of Euclid’s Elements

London, Printed for the Bibliographical Society, 1926.

£150

Large 4to. vii, 67, with 14 (numbered 1 to 13, with 1a and 1b) final plates. Cloth-backed spine (quarter cloth) and paper over boards. Part of the “Illustrated Monographs issued by the Bibliographical Society. No. XX”, printed on front cover. A near fine copy. U.e.g.

WEAVER, William D. (Ed.)

WEAVER, William D. (Ed.). Catalogue of the Wheeler Gift of Books, Pamphlets and Periodicals in the Library of thee American Institute of Electrical Engineers. With Introduction, Descriptive and Central Notes by Brother Potamian

New York, American Institute of Electrical Engineers, 1909.

£85

8vo. 2 vols. vii, 504 p.; 475 p.. Both volumes with frontispiece portraits protected by tissue paper guards. Marbled endpapers. Coated cloth, gilt lettering on green-paint labels to spines. Light wear and soiling to covers, faded spines. From the library of H. W. Crozier, name stamped on pastedowns. A good copy.

 

WIGHTMAN, W. P. D.

 

WIGHTMAN, W. P. D.. Science and the Renaissance. An introduction to the study of the Emergence of the Sciences in the Sixteenth Century.

Edinburgh, Oliver and Boyd, 1962.

£60

8vo. 2 vols. Buckram gilt, original dust jackets. First two books with illustrated upper pastedowns. An excellent copy.

PENNINGTON, John H.

PENNINGTON, John H. Aerostation, or steam aerial navigation

Baltimore, Entered according to Act of Congress . . . in the Clerks Office of the District Court of Maryland, 1838.

£8750

FIRST EDITION. Octavo, eight pages plus a lithographic plate, rather frayed and worn at fore-edges, library and ink accession numbers. Early paper wrappers, torn and frayed, modern morocco bound encasement. Stamps of Franklin Institute Library, Pennsylvania.

Rare. Pennington, a Baltimore inventor, proposed and patented an immense disc 375 feet in length, powered by paddle-wheels.

Kress C4699 (photocopy only). Photocopy only in BL. OCLC WorldCat gives one copy at the Senate House of the University of London, which appears to be the only copy in public collections in Britain. WorldCat lists a number of copies in Germany and the US, Canada, Australia and only one in Switzerland and New Zealand.

DERHAM, William

DERHAM, William (Assisted by Hooke and Tompion). The Artificial Clockmaker . . . A Treatise of Watch, and Clock-work: Wherein the Art of Calculating Numbers for most sorts of Movements is explained to the capacity of the Unlearned. Also the History of Clock-work, both Ancient and Modern. With other Useful Matters never before Published. 

London, James Knapton, 1696.

£5000

Quarto, pp. vi 11, 132. FIRST EDITION. Very light browning, small tear in bottom margin of L 4 and R 4, neither affecting text. Single blind-stamped border with decorative motifs on corners, compartmentalised spine, gilt title on red leather in one, a clean and firm copy, bound in contemporary mottled calf well preserved. Ex-libris E.M. Bartlett. The Kenney copy.

William Derham, vicar of Upminster, Essex, is mainly known to horologists for this little treatise on clocks and watches. From the Restoration onwards, horology became a subject of scientific discussion and investigation. It was largely the innovations of Robert Hooke and his contemporary, Thomas Tompion, which enabled the field to move beyond imitation by blacksmiths. Derham’s work is a summation of horological discoveries to date and reflects the newly found serious nature of this field of study. In the preface of ‘The Artificial Clock-Maker’ he acknowledged the help he had received from Hooke and Tompion. ‘In the History of the Modern Inventions, I have had (among some others), the assistance chiefly of the ingenious Dr H . . . and Dr T . . .: The former being the Author of some, and well acquainted with others, of the Mechanical Inventions of that fertile Reign of King Charles II and the latter actually concerned in all, or most of the late inventions in Clock-work, by means of his famed skill in that, and other Mechanick operations’.

Derham was also a naturalist, scientist, and theologian. He contributed to the Transactions of the Royal Society and was elected fellow in 1702. On the accession of George I, Derham became chaplain to the Prince of Wales, afterwards George II, and was installed canon of Windsor in September 1716. (See also R. W. Symonds, (incidentally the grandfather of Thomas.J. Symonds), Thomas Tompion, (London 1951)).

Wing D 1099 (7 locations in UK; Clark Library, Boston Public Library, Library Company of Philadelphia and Yale only in US).

[HOOKE. Robert, ed.]

HOOKE’S RARE CONTINUATION OF THE TRANSACTIONS

[HOOKE. Robert, ed.] Philosophical Collections

London, Printed for John Martyn, [Moses Pitt, Richard Chiswell], for the Royal Society, 1679-82.

£20000

FIRST EDITION. Compete set of 7 parts in one volume, 210 pp., 6 folding plates, one full-page engraving (no. 5, p. 161), one half-page engraving (no. 4, p. 92), Bound in modern half calf and buckram over boards by Sangorsky & Sutcliffe. A fine copy. 

The polymath Robert Hooke (1635-1703) was authorised by the Council of the Royal Society to publish the Philosophical Collections after the official Transactions ceased publication on Henry Odenburg’s death in 1677. Ordinary publication of the Transactions was resumed in January 1682- 3. The purpose of the journal was to provide an up-to-date account of any sicientific topic, such as physical, anatomical, chemical, mechanical, astronomical, optical, natural-philosophical and natural-historical observations, and to advertise the publication of such books. Complete sets of these seven numbers are very uncommon. The present volume also includes anatomical and medical studies. Hooke here published important papers, especailly An optical discourse, which concerned a cure for short-sightedness. One finds in the present collection Leeuwenhoek’s discovery of spermatozoa through the study of animal semen; Lana’s “flying chariot”; Borelli’s De motu musculorum; Tyson’s Anatomy of a porpess (sic); and astronomical observations by Hevelius, Flamsteed, and Cassini on the eclipse of Jupiter by the moon in 1679 and 1681. Furthermore, major discoveries by Malpighi, Moxon, Thomas Burnett, Edmund Halley, Bernoulli, and Leibniz are published in this series for the first time. The plates show Bernier’s flying machine, Borelli’s underwater breathing apparatus, and a new lamp invented by Robert Boyle. William Brigg’s A new theory of vision, a discussion of the optic nerves, is accompanied by a plate illustrating a dissected eye; this detailed physiological study of vision motivated Newton to republish it in 1685 with his own introduction. The Royal Society, founded in 1660, is the oldest scientific society in Great Britain and one of the oldest in Europe. Founders and early members included the scientist Bishop John Wilkins, the philosopher Joseph Glanvill, the mathematician John Wallis and the architect Christopher Wren, who wrote the preamble of its charter.

Keynes, Hooke 24. Norman 1100 (listing only 3 folding plates). See PMM 148 for the ‘Philosophical Transactions’.