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Instrument Book With Do-It-Yourself Compass
[Instruments] GALGEMAIR, Georg. Herrn Georgii Galgemairs Kurtzer gründlicher gebesserter unnd vermehrter underricht/ Zuberitung und gebrauch/ Der hochnutlichen mathematischen Instrumenten/ Proportional Schregmäß und Circkels/ benebens dem fundament deß visierens. Ulm, Joseph Meder, 1615.
4to, [22 x 14.6 cm], (4) ff., 130 pp., (2) ff. including final blank, 2 folding plates [1 engraved, 1 woodcut] plus numerous woodcut illustrations in text. Bound in early blind-ruled quarter calf and marbled paper over boards, covers scuffed. Minor foxing on endpapers only. Excellent copy.
$3,850 Second, greatly expanded edition of a primer describing the construction & use of two instruments—a proportional compass (Circkel) and lineal compass (Schregmäß)—for the measurement of geometrical solids and lines, respectively. This 1615 edition is ninety-five pages longer than the initial pamphlet (1610), and substitutes an engraved plate for the second woodcut plate of the first edition. The construction of the instruments is described and the geometry and measurement of increasingly complex solids and linear configurations are explained. The new engraving of the lineal compass has another use beyond demonstration—the text explicitly states that it can be pasted to a piece of wood and used as an actual instrument (Aiv, verso). This was not the intention in the previous edition, for the woodcut folding sheet for the circular compass also bears a new heading ordering the user not to employ that sheet directly as an instrument: “This Circkel is not to be pasted onto wood, like the Schregmäß on the engraving. Instead, printed alone, so that both the shape and likeness (as it should be made) are hereby truly to be seen.”
A student who built and learned to use these instruments could also work through this text in order to learn basic geometry from the perspective of measuring instruments. They could then proceed to other manuals which covered the practical problems relevant to his occupation or interests: surveying, cartography, ballistics, navigation etc. Still, the use of these instruments to teach such basic material invites the suggestion that they were employed in schools even without a view of practical considerations, as an ancillary for teaching, much the way the pocket calculator is now. The few 'real-world' problems concern volumes of liquid in solids and some horological calculations and are undoubtedly school exercises.
The titlepage mentions Georg Brentel and Stephan Michelspacher as editors. The former was an artist and scientific instrument maker who published numerous pamphlets with functional scientific instrument prints in Launingen in the early seventeenth century. In the first edition of this text, Brentel signed the dedication to a Nuremberg citizen, referring to similar tracts by Levinius Hulsius and Philipp Horcher as stimuli for having Galgemair produce this treatise in German. Brentel’s initials do not appear on the illustrations, and in the present edition, Lucas Kilian, an engraver who worked for the Augsburg publisher Michelspacher, signs the frontispiece instead. Michelspacher also pens the new dedication to Philipp Edward Fugger (1546–1618) of the Augsburg merchant dynasty, emphasizing the importance of practical mathematics. Michelspacher is best known for his scientific publishing, especially Lucas Kilian’s multiple-flap anatomy engravings for Johann Remmelin’s Catoptrum Microcosmicum, ca 1613. A rare instrument manual in superb condition.
Not in Zinner; VD17 3:236794Z
OCLC: Lehigh University, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin-Madison
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