Dissertatio physica de mercurio lucente in vacuo quam annuente aeterno luminum patre permissu sapientiss. Philos. Ord. in Univ. Basil. sub praesidio viri excellentissimi, celeberrimi Joh. Bernoulli, Ph. et M ed. D. Math. P. P. trium societatum scient. Gall. Angl. et Boruss. Socii, patroni et praeceptoris sui omni observantiae cultu prosequendi, publico eruditorum examini submittit ad d. 24. Mart. MDCCXIX Wilhelm. Bernhard. Nebel, Hasso-Marpurg. M. C. Auctor. In auditorio collegii inferioris.
Basel: Frederick Lüdi, [1719]. First edition, extremely rare, and a presentation copy from Nicolaus I Bernoulli to James Stirling, of this dissertation which describes Johann I Bernoulli’s two decades of work on ‘barometric light’ – the discovery of this phenomenon revealed the possibility of electric lighting. One of the foremost mathematicians of eighteenth-century Europe, James Stirling was a protégé of Sir Isaac Newton, and played a pivotal role in the Newtonian revolution in mathematics. Renowned for his contributions to infinitesimal calculus and infinite series, he gives his name to two major discoveries in Stirling’s formula and the Stirling numbers. Barometric light was first observed in 1675 by the French astronomer Jean Picard. When transporting his barometer from the Royal Observatory to Port Saint Michel during the night, he noticed a light in a part of the tube where the mercury was moving. The Swiss mathematician Johann I Bernoulli learned of Picard’s luminous barometer from Joachim d’Alence’s Traittez de Barométres, Thermométres, et Notiométres, ou Hygrométres (1688). He studied the phenomenon while teaching at Groningen, the Netherlands, and in 1700 he presented a ‘new way to render barometers luminous’ to the French Academy. He developed a method using phosphorus compounds with the mercury in a vacuum, creating a ‘portable mercurial phosphorus’ or ‘bottled light’. Bernoulli’s work paved the way for later investigations by the English scientist Francis Hauksbee and contributed to understanding gas-discharge phenomena, precursors to modern neon and mercury vapor lamps. “Newton was much interested in [barometric light] and promoted Hauksbee’s experiments” (Guicciardini, n. 15). The present dissertation gives an account of the discovery of barometric light and of Johann I Bernoulli’s investigations of it. In the Ad Lectorem Nebel writes: “I will begin with a brief historical narrative of the birth and fate of the invention of Bernoulli; it will be followed by an exposition of the whole system and the explanations of the phenomena derived from it; then various methods and rules will be taught for preparing luminous barometers and portable mercury phosphors.” The present dissertation was printed in Johann I Bernoulli’s collected works. This is one of two books rescued from the office of the mining company at Leadhills, where James Stirling worked from 1735. It was rebound by William Stirling of Tarduff. Not in Wellcome; OCLC lists Columbia only in US. Provenance: Presented by Johann I Bernoullis’ nephew, Nicolaus I Bernoulli to the Scottish mathematician James Stirling (1692-1770) (inscribed by Stirling ‘Ja: Stirling Ex dono viri cl[arissimi]. D. N. Bernoulli, Venetiis, 1st September 1719’ on an initial blank). Little is known of Stirling’s early life until his arrival at Oxford in 1710. In 1715 John Keill noted in a letter to Newton that the problem of orthogonal trajectories proposed by Leibniz had recently been solved by ‘Mr. Stirling an under-graduate here’. After leaving Oxford in 1717 and tempted by the possibility of a professorship of mathematics, probably at Padua, where it was customary to appoint a foreigner, James Stirling had gone to Italy, and by 1719 was in Venice, a favourite haunt of members of the Bernoulli family. There he met Nicolaus I Bernoulli (1687-1759), professor of mathematics at Padua, who presented Stirling with this copy of his uncle’s dissertation on barometric light (his meeting with Bernoulli is referred to in a surviving letter from Bernoulli to Stirling). Stirling must have become quite close to Bernoulli – while in Venice he wrote to Newton offering to act as a go-between in Newton’s dispute with the Bernoullis over priority for the invention of calculus. Newton in turn was probably supporting Stirling financially – in 1719 Stirling wrote to Newton from Venice thanking him for an unspecified act of generosity, usually interpreted as a gift of money, and in the same year communicated to the Royal Society his paper ‘Methodus differentialis Newtoniana illustrata’, the basis for his magnum opus, the Methodus differentialis sive tractatus de summatio et interpolatio serierum infinitarum, which was published in 1730. Stirling was back in Scotland by 1722, and in 1725 became a tutor at Watts’s Academy in Little Tower Street, Covent Garden. The following year he was elected to the Royal Society, and his surviving correspondence shows that he spent the ensuing decade engaged in the productive exchange of ideas with his peers across Europe as the Newtonian revolution unfolded, while calling regularly on the aged Newton himself, informing his brother in a letter home that “Sr Isaac Newton lives a little way of in the country. I go frequently to see him, and find him extremely kind and serviceable in every thing I desire, but he is much failed and not able to do as he has done”. In 1735 James Stirling was appointed manager of the mines at Leadhills, Lanarkshire on behalf of the Scots Mining Company, remaining in this position until his death on 5 December 1770. His work at Leadhills left him little time for scientific research. The present volume was taken by Stirling to Leadhills and rescued from the office of the mining company there by William Stirling of Tarduff and rebound. “Two pupils of Galileo, Evangelista Torricelli (1608-1647) and Vincenzo Viviani (1622-1703), constructed the mercury barometer in 1643, thereby contributing to science an instrument of universal importance in research. During the latter part of the seventeenth century, every laboratory had its barometer. Some thirty years after its invention, in 1675, Jean Picard (1620-1682), a French priest and one of the famous group of astronomers at the newly established Paris observatory, noticed a glow above the mercury in his barometer when carried about in a dark room … One of the remarkable characteristics of the light was its appearance when the mercury moved downward but not when it was moving upwards. A number of barometers behaved like the one of Picard but others did not. After the first enthusiastic report the eerie light was neglected for some years. “In 1700 Johan I Bernoulli (1667-1748), Swiss mathematician and founder of the famous family, again called attention to the barometer light and considerable discussion ensued in the French Academy at that time. The argument, in which Cassini and de la Hire joined, chiefly centered around the precautions necessary to produce the effect. Bernoulli’s three letters (1700-1701) were published by the French Academy and translated by Martyn and Chambers (1742). In the first letter, June 19, 1700, he suggested that pure mercury and complete absence of air were essential, because in passing through air, the mercury became covered with an ash gray pellicle which prevented the material of ‘the first element’ from passing out of the mercury into the vacuum. Consequently, Bernoulli devised some ingenious methods of filling the barometer without allowing the mercury to come in contact with air, but the French Academy was not always successful in obtaining a luminous barometer by following his methods. Bernoulli reasoned that light appears when the mercury descends because a subtle material must go out of it (call it matter of the first element) and meet another matter that enters through the pores of the glass (matter of the second element or celestial globules). “He went on to say that while particles of the first element are in the mercury they cannot make light, because they are ‘oppressed’ by the mercury but when they get out by descent of the mercury, they ‘take that rapid course [out of the mercury] and by the effect which they make on the celestial globules which meet them, they produce this light; from whence the reason is seen why this light is only observed in the descent of the quicksilver; for when it reascends the matter of the first element is so far from going out, that there rather enters again, a part of that which went out in the preceding fall; and the rest is driven away with the celestial globules, out of the tube through the pores of the glass.’ New matter of the first element must keep coming from the mercury to make the light visible and hence the light only lasts while the mercury descends. “Repetition of Bernoulli’s new methods by the French Academy also gave trouble, but in September 1706, M. Du Tal, in an article published in the Nouvelles de la Republic des Lettres in 1716 confirmed Bernoulli’s results using well purified mercury and suggested that the Academy members had not carried out his directions exactly. This was undoubtedly true, for Bernoulli's reasoning and experiments were all that could be desired. It is probable that the reason some barometers did not luminesce was the presence of quenchers as impurities and the experiments may be taken as the first to demonstrate quenching of electroluminescence, but it is difficult to assign a name to the discovery. “However, Bernoulli’s chief claim to luminescence fame lies not in his barometer experiments but in demonstrations which followed from them, described in his second letter to the French Academy, November 6, 1700. He placed clean mercury in a clean phial well exhausted of air and found that a brilliant light appeared whenever he shook the phial. This was called the ‘perpetual phosphorus,’ which would last forever. Bernoulli wrote: ‘The curious to whom I have shown them [the exhausted phials containing mercury] have declared, that they have seen nothing more wonderful, in short, the whole phial is in a flame, and the quicksilver like a burning liquor.’ “When air was let in, the light no longer appeared on shaking and the mercury surface was found to be covered with a pellicle. In a third letter, July 5 1701, Bernoulli described preparing some particularly pure mercury, which he placed in a scrupulously clean phial and found that it gave light by shaking when the vial was full of air. The light ‘appeared only like separate sparks, which arose successively and perished almost at the same time; whereas the light in the vacuum is like a continual flame which lasts incessantly while the quicksilver is in agitation. I conclude from these experiments, that the quicksilver, if it be perfectly purified, may let the subtile matter (which I call with M. Descartes, by the name of the first element) go out of its pores in such a quantity at once, that for all the resistance of the air, it has still motion enough to produce some light.’ The visual evidence for an electrical origin of the light was thus described by Bernoulli, but at that time electrical knowledge was confined to attraction and repulsion, with no inkling of the spectacular developments to come … “During the years 1710-1719 a number of publications on the barometer light appeared; by N. Hartsoeker (1710), who denied Bernoulli's facts and theory without adding anything himself; by T. Negotius (1715), an inconsequential pamphlet of eight pages; by J. F. Weidler (1715), who also combatted Bernoulli’s views, holding that the pellicle on the mercury does not interfere with the light, which comes from rebounding of the rays of luminous material; by J. M. Heusinger (1716), an excellent forty-eight-page dissertation under the auspices of J. G. Liebknecht (1679-1749) professor of mathematics and theology at the University of Giessen; then the views of J. J. D. de Mairan (1678-1771), expressed in his prize essay on phosphores (1717); finally another dissertation of seventy-four pages by W. B. Nebel (1719), under the auspices of J. Bernoulli at Basel. The Nebel thesis gave Bernoulli an opportunity to sum up the knowledge and to answer his critics. The pamphlet ends with a discussion of the uses of the light and dedicatory poems” (Harvey, pp. 271-274). Wilhelm Bernhard Nebel was born in 1699 at Marburg. From 1718 he studied at Strasburg and Basel, and subsequently at Geneva and Lausanne, graduating at Heidelberg. After studying anatomy at Strasburg, he taught experimental physics at Heidelberg, and in 1724 mathematics and physics at Herborn, and medicine later. In 1728 he was teacher of medicine at Heidelberg and was appointed Hofmedicus. He died 18 April 1748. Nebel was one of the first iatrophysicists (iatrophysics being the medical doctrine that the changes in the life processes and pathology of an organism are purely physical and mechanical and the body should be understood as a machine), and one of the first doctors in Germany to study the inoculation of smallpox, publishing on the subject from 1729 onwards. In 1740 he published at Heidelberg another dissertation, on the medical uses of quinine. Nicolaus I Bernoulli (1687-1759) was a nephew of Jacob (1654-1705) and Johann I Bernoulli (1667-1748), the founders of the famous Bernoulli dynasty of Swiss mathematicians. Nicolaus was awarded his PhD at Basel in 1709 for a study of the application of probability theory to legal problems, De usu artis conjectandi in jure, and he is remembered today first and foremost as an outstanding figure in the early development of probabilistic and statistical ideas. In 1716, with Leibniz’s support, he was appointed to Galileo’s chair at Padua. In 1722 he left Italy and returned to Basel as Professor of Logic and later Professor of Law. He was throughout his professional life a prolific correspondent with other leading European mathematicians. Guicciardini, The Newton-Leibniz calculus controversy, 1708-1730, in The Oxford Handbook of Newton (Schliesser & Smeen, eds.). Harvey, A History of Luminescence from the Earliest Times until 1900, 1957.
Small 4to (203 x 157 mm), pp. [ii], 73, [1]. Nineteenth-century ‘divinity’ calf over bevelled boards by Maclehose of Glasgow for William Stirling of Tarduff, Stirling arms in gilt on both covers, bookplates of William Stirling and Archibald Stirling, pencilled annotation to first blank, red edges (joints and spine a little rubbed). A fine copy.
Item #6608
Price: $9,500.00
