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Physics & Optics
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Very Rare Coulomb Off-Print
COULOMB, Charles Augustin. Thie des Machines simples, en ayant rd au frottement de leurs parties et a la roideur des Corages. Piece qui a remporte Prix double de l'Acade des Sciences pour l'ann 1781. Paris, L'Imprimerie de Moutard, 1782.
4to. [19 x 27 cm], 172 pp., 5 plates numbered II-VI, signed Elth (=Elizabeth?) Haussard, with imprint of Scavants Etrangeres T.X. p. 332 in platemark. Bound in 19th-century quarter buckram and marbled papers over boards, with buckram corners. Two stamps from German military libraries on title, one cancelled, along with stamped shelf-mark; additional stamps of versos of plates; some browning along upper margin of title; some occasional foxing in margin of scattered leaves, but withal, a large copy preserving original deckle in upper and lower fore-edges, roughly half of the work uncut.
$7,500 Rare off-print of the great physicist’s most important work on friction, with an imprint three years before publication in journal form (1785), and considerably in advance (27 years) of the first appearance in book form. “Coulomb’s most celebrated study, one that brought him immediate acclaim, was ‘Théorie des machines simples,’ his prize-winning friction study of 1781. He investigated both static and dynamic friction of sliding surfaces and friction in bending of cords and in rolling…. Coulomb’s work in friction remained a standard of theory and experiment for a century and a half, until the advent of molecular studies of friction in the twentieth century. To quote Kragelsky and Schedrov’s recent monograph (p. 52) on the history of friction: ‘Coulomb’s contributions to the science of friction were exceptionally great. Without exaggeration, one can say that he created this science’” (Gillmor in DSB III.442).
“Coulomb showed that these forces (of electrical attraction and repulsion) followed Newton’s Law... He also showed that electrical charges are divided solely on the surface of conductors and determined how an electrified body loses its charge in ambient air...Coulomb’s researches can be considered as the beginning of genuine scientific knowledge of electricity” (Daumas).
The present work presents a bibliographical riddle which has never been described. The leading American scholar of Coulomb, C.S. Gillmor of Wesleyan University, does not list this 1782 publication of the Théorie des Machines in the DSB article or his monograph, and recent private communication finds that he has not seen it in the good number of years since he published those studies. According to Gillmor, the first published version of the present work appeared in 1785 on pages 161-332 of vol. X of the Mémoires de Mathématique et de Physique Présentés á L’Académie Royale des Sciences, Par Divers Savans. The plates in the present edition (figures 1-27 on plates numbered II-VI) are integral with the text (see p. 7), and appear to be the same as those in the journal publication: each contains the printed title at the top of the plate Scavans Etrangers Tom X 332. This links the plates to the journal, since the plates in such publications are generally bound at the back and the page number is precisely the last numbered page of the work in the journal publication (332). But, the pagination in the present edition is completely different [1]–172 pages, and the date of the imprint is 3 years earlier.
Let us recall that the Théorie was delivered orally in 1781 and that it won an important prize, a fact advertised on the title: ‘Piece qui a remporté le Prix double de l’Académie des Sciences pour l’Année 1781.’ It was certainly common to publish proceedings of prize-winning works separately, but it is difficult to imagine how a work whose imprint date is 1782 can be issued with plates bearing evidence of a journal publication three years later. Thus one can envision that the book was printed in 1782 but more likely published in 1785, when the plates were ready. The completely different pagination establishes the present work as a separate publication (and not an extract), and was almost certainly done for limited distribution (Academy members, etc.).
OCLC lists three copies: Harvard, Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg (2 copies or a duplicate record?).
* Hollis: Houghton *80-1235; C. Stewart Gillmor in DSB III.342 and his Coulomb and the evolution of Physics and Engineering in 18th-century France, 118-138 and for bibliography, 297ff.
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