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"Europe's Best Observatory" - Dibner
HEVELIUS, Johannes. Machinae Coelestis pars prior; Organographiam, sive Instrumentum Astronomicorum omnium, quibus Auctor hactenus Sidera rimatus, ac dimensus est. Danzig, Simon Reininger for the Author, 1673.
Folio, (7) ff., 464 pp., including half-title & engraved frontispiece, with 30 full-page engraved plates of instruments (5 of which are double-page). Bound in contemporary vellum over boards, manuscript title on spine, housed in clam-shell box. Ex libris of HF Norman on front end pastedown, Breslau Stadt-Bibliothek duplicate stamp on verso of half-title. Half-title torn around lettering, small burn hole in margin on B2, occasional light foxing, overall excellent.
$85,000 Extremely rare first edition of this lavishly illustrated, privately printed description by Hevelius of his observatory, "Stellaburgum." Like Tycho Brahe's Astronomiae Instauratae for an earlier generation, the Machinae Coelestis set the technical standard for observatories and astronomical instrumentation for the rest of the 17th century. The work includes 30 spectacular full-page plates of the general plan of the observatory as well as the long-range telescopes, quadrants, sextants, and astronomical instruments designed and constructed by the author. Two plates are of interest for the history of women in science: plates M & O picture Hevelius' wife operating a quadrant, among the earliest representations of women using sophisticated scientific instruments.
It was at this Danzig observatory with primarily open-sighted instruments that Hevelius observed and recorded sunspots, the surface of the moon, discovered lunar libration in terms of longitude and described four comets otherwise unknown. The book "triggered a controversy that was to shake European astronomy for the next decade" (Hevelius & His Catalogue of Stars, p. 36) on the relative value of plain and telescopic sights, and it received detailed criticism the following year by Robert Hooke. After receiving many of the leading astronomers of Europe, including a visit from Halley in 1679, the observatory was entirely destroyed by fire, making the present publication the principal record of its existence. A second volume was published in 1679 and contained a catalogue of Hevelius' astronomical observations. According to the Dibner catalogue, the stock for this work was virtually entirely destroyed in the fire, and it is known in only a dozen copies. This may be something of an exageration, but we trace only a single copy on the market in the past 20 years (Honeyman copy, now in Barchas Collection).
The astronomer's interest in book production went back to his school days in Holland, where he developed a strong admiration for the style of the folio format produced by the Elsevirs, and the work at hand reflects this. Hevelius designed and executed at least one of the plates himself (T), and very likely had a hand in some of the unsigned plates. The majority of the plates are signed by Andreas Stech and Isaak Saal. The splendid frontispiece was designed by Adolf Boy and executed by Jeremias Falk.
* Zinner 375-82; Norman 1068; Dibner, Heralds 10; see Johannes Hevelius and his Catalogue of Stars (1971) pp. 36ff.; DSB VI. 360-366; B鮩zit IX.789 (Stech), IX. 210 (Saal), II.255 (Boy), IV.257 (Falk).
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