Paris: Giraudet for Bachelier, 1824. First edition, very rare, and a fine copy in original state, of Carnot’s only published work, which led directly to the first and second laws of thermodynamics. “Carnot, one of the most original thinkers among physical scientists, applied himself to the analysis of the cyclical..... More
Item #4836

Bologna: Clemente Ferroni, 1632. First edition, rare, of Cavalieri’s highly important treatise on conic sections and their applications in optics, acoustics and, perhaps most significantly, mechanics. Its importance in the history of the telescope is well-known: “Cavalieri’s design may well have been in all the essentials a direct anticipation of..... More
Item #5314

Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1832. First edition, complete journal volume in original printed wrappers, of this important work on the theory of machines, a follow-up to his Du calcul de l’effet des machines, published in 1829 (but begun a decade earlier) in which he studied dynamical problems associated with rotating machinery. “His..... More
Item #5019

Manchester: Printed by Harrison and Crosfield for Baldwin and Cradock, 1834. Second edition (first, 1793), inscribed by Dalton, of Dalton’s first book which, according to Dalton himself, “contained the germs of most of the ideas afterwards expanded by him into discoveries” (DNB V, 428-34). Dalton (1766-1844) is famous today for..... More
Item #4946

London: Abell Jeffes, 1591. Second and best edition of this important Elizabethan work on practical geometry, in which “for the first time, we have indications of an instrument which we may call a reflecting telescope” (King, The History of the Telescope, p. 29). This second edition contains several appendices by Thomas..... More
Item #5131

St. Petersburg: ex Typographia Academiae Scientiarum, 1739. First edition, and a remarkable copy in original state, of Euler’s most important work on music. The Swiss mathematician, scientist and philosopher Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) “contributed more to theoretical acoustics as the subject is now known than has any other man” (The New..... More
Item #5636

London: Richard Taylor, 1831. First edition, very rare offprint, inscribed by Faraday to his friend and fellow electrical researcher William Snow Harris, of one of Faraday’s most important papers: his experiments with sound vibrations that facilitated his revolutionary discovery of the production of electricity by electromagnetic induction. “In February 1831..... More
Item #5298

Paris: [Chardon for] Cuchet, 1783-1784. First edition, second issue of the first volume (with the four-page supplement), of the first full-length account of the historic experiments with balloon flight conducted by the Montgolfier brothers in 1783, and “the first serious treatise on aerostation as a practical possibility” (PMM). The Montgolfier..... More
Item #5411

Paris: Bachelier, 1853. First edition, rare, and an exceptionally fine copy, of Foucault’s doctoral thesis on the speed of light, in which he provides a convincing proof for the wave theory of light. In the 1840s Foucault undertook a series of optical experiments using an apparatus of rotating mirrors to..... More
Item #4843

de l’Academie des Sciences de l’URSS, 1937. First edition, very rare offprint, of the explanation of Cherenkov radiation, for which Frank and Tamm shared (with Cherenkov) the Nobel Prize in Physics 1958. “In certain media the speed of light is lower than in a vacuum and particles can travel faster..... More
Item #5969

London: William Jones, 1635. First edition, extremely rare, of Gellibrand’s most important discovery: the secular change in magnetic declination, or variation. According to William Gilbert in his De Magnete (1600), the existence of magnetic declination, the difference in direction between geographical and magnetic north, is a result of the magnetic..... More
Item #5121

Nottingham: Printed for the author, by T. Wheelhouse, 1828. First edition, “excessively rare” (Wheeler Gift), of “one of the major publications in the mathematics of the 19th century” (Landmark Writings, p. 403), in which Green revolutionized the study of potential theory as we now understand it (and coined the term..... More
Item #5637

Amsterdam: Johanned Jansson Waesberge, 1672. First edition of one of the great classics of science. “A book of prime importance in electrical discovery, air-pressure and the vacuum pump” (Dibner). Guericke proved the existence of a vacuum through his famous experiment, illustrated by one of the double-page plates. “At Ratisbon in..... More
Item #5796