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

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

St. Petersburg: E. L. Porokhovshchikov, 1903. First edition, extraordinarily rare, of the first published work on space rockets, preceding by 16 years the first publication on rockets by Robert Goddard and by 20 years that of Hermann Oberth. In his bibliography of works on spaceflight, NASA engineer Michael L. Ciancone..... More
Item #4929

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