[Chicago: Western Society of Engineers], 1897. First edition, extremely rare offprint, of this seminal work in the history of aviation, and a remarkable association copy linking three great early American pioneers of aviation and technology. In this work, Chanute presented his findings from nearly 2,000 flights made at Dune Park..... More
Item #4699

Rome: Imprimérie des Sciences Mathématiques, 1881; 1882. First edition, the rare offprint issues, of the most original mathematical work of the fifteenth century, indeed the most important since Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci almost three centuries earlier (a work which was also not published until the nineteenth century). Composed in 1484, but..... More
Item #4446

Baltimore, Maryland: John Hopkins, 1936. First edition of the first proof that the Entscheidungsproblem (‘decision problem’) is unsolvable, published seven months before Alan Turing published his own independent proof in his paper ‘On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem.’ Church’s proof was via his ‘lambda-calculus’; Turing’s was via..... More
Item #4543

Berlin: Trowibsch and son for Ferdinand Dümmler, 1832-1837. First edition, very rare complete set of all 10 volumes, of this classic work, including Vom Kriege (vols. 1-3), “the most profound exposition of the philosophy of war” (PMM). “On War is one of the most important books ever written on the..... More
Item #3777

Nuremberg: Johann Petreius, 1543. First edition, and an unusually fine copy, of the most important scientific publication of the sixteenth century – a “landmark in human thought” (PMM). De revolutionibus was the first work to propose a comprehensive heliocentric theory of the cosmos, according to which the sun stood still..... More
Item #5776

Paris: Bachelier, 1835. First edition, complete journal issue (‘cahier’) in original printed wrappers, of the first formulation of the ‘Coriolis force’. “On a rotating earth the Coriolis force acts to change the direction of a moving body to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the..... More
Item #5153

Paris: Béthune and Plon for Susse frères and Delloye, 1839. First edition, the true first issue (see below), of Daguerre’s exposition of his photographic process, “the beginnings of photography” (Horblit); this is an excellent unrestored copy in original printed wrappers, and very rare in this condition. “Perhaps no other invention..... More
Item #5602

Manchester: S. Russell for R. Bickerstaff; Russell & Allen for R. Bickerstaff; Executives of S. Russell for G. Wilson, 1808; 1810; 1827. First edition, untouched in uniform original publisher’s bindings with original printed spine labels, of Dalton’s classic work on the atomic theory of matter. “Dalton reconstructed Newton's speculations on..... More
Item #5935

Cambridge: [the University Press for the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 1835. First edition, very rare, inscribed by John Stevens Henslow, of Darwin’s first separately printed work and his first account in print of his discoveries on the Beagle. “During his five-year voyage on HMS Beagle, Darwin maintained a correspondence with John..... More
Item #5657

London: John Murray, 1859. First edition, presentation copy, of “the most influential scientific work of the nineteenth century” (Horblit), “the most important biological work ever written” (Freeman), and “a turning point, not only in the history of science, but in the history of ideas in general” (DSB). “Darwin not only..... More
Item #5894

Paris: Antoine Dezallier, 1679. First and only edition, incredibly rare, of the last (surviving) contribution published by the brilliant French mathematician Girard Desargues in the notorious ‘perspective wars’ – Desargues was “the greatest perspectivist and projective geometer of his generation” (Kemp, The Science of Art, p. 120). Desargues published his..... More
Item #5918

Basel: Eusebius & Heirs of Nikolaus Episcopius, 1575. First edition, very rare, of the first systematic treatise on algebra (Smith, Rara Arithmetica, p. 348), which “inspired the rebirth of number theory” (Britannica), translated from the Greek by Wilhelm Holtzmann [Xylander] – the original Greek text was not published until 1621..... More
Item #4710

Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930. First edition, and a fine copy with the dust-wrapper, of Dirac’s famous and hugely influential textbook, which “summarized the foundations of a new science, much of which was his own creation. It expressed the spirit of the new quantum mechanics, creating a descriptive language that we..... More
Item #5883