Philadelphia: Printed by James Kay, Jun. & Brothers, 1839. First edition, author’s presentation offprint, of the third and most important part of Henry’s Contributions to Electricity and Magnetism. Following on from his discovery of electromagnetic self-induction in 1832, in the present paper Henry extends his results on ‘galvanic’ electricity (current..... More
Item #4282

London: R. & J. E. Taylor, 1842. First edition, extremely rare offprint, of this seminal early work of photography, the invention of the world’s first photocopying process, ‘cyanotype,’ later called ‘blue-printing’; this remained by far the most important reprographic process for more than a century after the publication of Herschel’s..... More
Item #4782

Leipzig; Berlin: Johann Ambrosius Barth; George Reimer for the Königlich Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1887-1892. First edition, extremely rare offprint, of the first of Hertz’s papers on electromagnetic waves, accompanied by offprints of six further papers on the same subject, including ‘Ueber elektrodynamische Wellen im Luftraume und deren Reflexion’, in which..... More
Item #4863

Rome: Sumptibus Hermanni Scheus, ex typographia Ludovici Grignani, 1646. First edition of Kircher’s principal contribution to optics, treating light, shadow, colour, refraction, projection, distortion and luminescence, and providing early descriptions of the camera obscura and magic lantern. The work also includes some of the earliest observations with a microscope, preceding..... More
Item #4288

Paris; Paris: Veuve Desaint; de l’Imprimerie de la République, 1788; An V [1797]. An exceptional volume, in a fine contemporary binding, containing the first edition of Lagrange’s masterpiece, the Méchanique, “one of the outstanding landmarks in the history of both mathematics and mechanics” (Sarton, p. 470) and “perhaps the most..... More
Item #4300

Augsburg: Christoph Peter Detleffsen for the widow of Eberhard Klett, 1760. First edition, and a remarkably fine copy, of this cornerstone of modern optics, with applications which touch on astronomy and photography; this is one of the rarest of modern science books of this stature. “It established a complete system..... More
Item #4778

London: Printed for the author’s children and sold by A. Millar, et al. 1748. First edition, large-paper copy, of Maclaurin’s statement of Newtonian theory, one of the three “most outstanding popular introductions to Newtonian science of the eighteenth century” (I. B. Cohen, Franklin and Newton, 1956, p. 209). “Though a...... More
Item #3409

Edinburgh: Printed by T.W. and T. Ruddimans, 1742. First edition, a very fine large and thick paper copy, of “the earliest logical and systematic publication of the Newtonian methods. It stood as a model of rigor until the appearance of Cauchy’s Cours d’Analyse in 1821” (DSB). The Treatise was written..... More
Item #4222

Florence: Giuseppe Cocchini, 1666 (dedication dated 14 July, 1667). First edition, the rare first issue, and owing to the magnificent contemporary Italian red morocco binding, a presentation copy (see below), of the only publication of the Accademia del Cimento, the first organisation founded for the sole purpose of making scientific..... More
Item #4707

Hambourg [i.e., Leiden]: [Élie Luzac], 1753. First edition, rare, of this collection of pamphlets relating to the ‘König affair,’ the celebrated polemic on the principle of least action, “perhaps the ugliest of all the famous scientific disputes” (DSB VII: 442). The König affair is of considerable importance in the history..... More
Item #4957

London & Cambridge: Macmillan, 1871. First edition, extremely rare, of Maxwell's inaugural lecture as Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Cambridge, which marks the beginning of the tradition of experimental research at the Cavendish Laboratory, a tradition which was to lead to 29 Nobel Prizes being awarded to..... More
Item #4958

[London:]: Taylor and Francis, [1867]. First edition, in the very rare original printed wrappers, of the first practical designs for a dynamo, made independently and almost simultaneously by Siemens and Wheatstone. Maxwell attended the February 1867 meeting of the Royal Society at which both papers were read, and he immediately..... More
Item #4305

Pesaro; Bologna: apud Hieronymum Concordiam; Costantino Pisarri, 1588 [colophon, 1587]; 1711. First edition, the beautiful Macclesfield copy, of Guidobaldo’s Paraphrasis, the important companion to his Mechanicorum liber (1577), regarded as the greatest work on statics since the Greeks, which employed the mathematically rigorous proofs of Archimedes to the investigation of..... More
Item #4716