Nuremberg: Anton Koberger for Sebald Schreyer, July 12, 1493. First edition, and a remarkable wide-margined complete copy, preserved in its original binding bearing the city of Vienna’s coat of arms, of the first illustrated encyclopedia. Published in 1493, at the dawn of the discovery period, in Nuremberg by Europe’s largest..... More
Item #5643
Rome: L. Grignani, 1631. First edition, rare, the Macclesfield copy, of the first description of the construction and use of the pantograph, a linkage mechanism that allows the duplication or scale-altering of a given diagram or drawing, which Scheiner invented about 1603. “This was probably the first copying device” (historyofinformation.com)..... More
Item #5305
Ingolstadt: Eder for Elisabeth Angermaria, 1614 & 1615. First edition, in a beautiful contemporary binding, of Scheiner’s very rare work containing the second earliest map of the moon – but the first to give topographical details – as well as the first illustrations of a telescope. It builds upon Scheiner’s..... More
Item #4126
Leyden: Jan Paedts Jacobsz, 1608-05-05-08. Very rare first edition in French of this collection of works, which was published almost simultaneously in Dutch, French and Latin. They deal, among other topics, with geometry, trigonometry, perspective, and double-entry book-keeping – Stevin was one of the first authors to compose a treatise..... More
Item #4588
London: for T. Astley, S. Austen and L. Gilliver, 1729. First edition of the best contemporary survey of hydraulic engineering in Britain in the early eighteenth century. “His great Introduction to a General System of Hydraulicks and Hydrostaticks, in two extensively illustrated volumes, appeared in 1729. It is his major..... More
Item #5089
Cologne: Johann Birkmann, 1562. First edition of this exceptionally rare, interesting, and notorious work – the second printed work on magnetism, preceded only by the Epistola de magnete of Peregrinus (1558) (which is virtually unobtainable). Taisnier’s work, in fact, contains a plagiarism of Peregrinus, which it reprints verbatim, and of..... More
Item #4307
![Item #4938 Quesiti, et inventioni diverse. [Colophon:] Venice: Venturino Ruffinelli, 1546. [Bound...](/pictures/thumb/4938.jpg?v=1592230381)
Venice: Giovanni Padovano for Curzio Troiano Navò, 1550. First edition of Tartaglia’s Quesiti, second edition of the other two works. The Quesiti continues the discussion of ballistics in Tartaglia’s Nova scientia (first published in 1537), pointing out for the first time that the trajectory of a projectile is curved throughout..... More
Item #4938
[New York: James Kempster Printing Company for the National Electric Light Association, 1893]. First edition, extremely rare offprint, inscribed by Tesla to the great American astronomer George Ellery Hale, of this famous lecture. “At St. Louis [Tesla] made the first public demonstration ever of radio communication, although Marconi is generally..... More
Item #4832
![Item #5610 [Opera Geometrica]. De sphaera et solidis sphaeralibus libri duo in quibus Archimedis...](/pictures/thumb/5610.jpg?v=1648132506)
Florence: Amadoro Massa & Lorenzo de Landis, 1644. First edition of the only book by Torricelli published in his lifetime, and an outstanding copy, uncut in original boards. The Opera geometrica contains his most important works on mathematics and physics. It diffused and considerably advanced the new geometry of indivisibles..... More
Item #5610
![Item #4695 De Centro Gravitatis Solidorum Libri Tres. Rome: B[artolomeo] Bonfadino, 1604. [Bound...](/pictures/thumb/4695.jpg?v=1592229823)
Rome: Bonfadino; Facio, 1604; 1606. First editions of these two rare and fundamental works on determining centres of gravity – these are fascinating copies with numerous contemporary annotations in an untouched contemporary binding. In these books Valerio transformed the Archimedean ‘method of exhaustion’ into a series of important theorems “so..... More
Item #4695
Amsterdam: Etienne Ledet et Compagnie, 1738. First edition, first issue, extremely rare large and thick paper copy, and in a beautiful contemporary binding, of Voltaire's only scientific work. “Owing to Descartes' great influence and Newton’s dispute with Leibnitz, the spread of his [Newton’s] thought on the continent took about fifty..... More
Item #4104
London: William Godbid for Moses Pitt, [1669-] 1671. First edition, very rare when complete with the portrait and all three parts, of this classic treatise on mechanics by Newton’s most important English precursor. It treats both statics (the balance, the lever, centres of gravity, elasticity, and hydrostatics) and dynamics (including..... More
Item #5201
![Item #5498 Peri optikes [in Greek], id est de natura, ratione, & projectione radiorum visus,...](/pictures/thumb/5498.jpg?v=1638528978)
Nuremberg: Johann Petri, 1535. First edition, rare, a copy with numerous early annotations, of the first comprehensive European treatise on optics, and the first work to contain descriptions of medieval laboratory instruments. Witelo (born ca. AD 1230) begins with the geometrical theorems required for the optical demonstrations of the remaining..... More
Item #5498