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Scientific Instruments
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THE PROPORTIONAL COMPASS COMES TO FRANCE
HENRION, D.. Usage du compas de Proportion. Paris, Michel Daniel, 1618.
Large 8vo., (4) ff., 1 folding plate, 90 pp., (3) ff.; homemade index in contemporary manuscript on endleaf, followed by 18th-c. ownership inscription. Bound in contemporary marbled calf, gilt spine with raised bands, red morocco title label, covers ruled. Small wormhole repair in gutter margin of initial leaves, affecting partial letters on a few leaves, and into blank margin of plate. Some waterstaining; lower corner of final leaves soiled and worn, corner of endleaf replaced.
$6,000 Very rare first edition of this illustrated work on the proportional compass, probably the first such work published in France, and indisputably the book to popularize use of the instrument in that country. The proportional compass was constructed by Daniel Chorez in 1616, the first known maker of optical instruments in France and an important instrument-maker of the period. It was 16-17 cm in length and followed the basic design of Galileo’s sector, but was a bit simpler, engraved with four scales—Lines of Equal Parts, Planes, Solids and Chords.
Drake alleges that the first edition appeared in the author’s Mémoires Mathématiques, but he is tentative about it because the only basis is a later statement by the author; Drake has not seen this 1616 edition. According to Itard in DSB, the first edition is 1618. (The NUC also records a 1564 Rouen imprint but Drake considers that this is a transposed date of 1654 or 1644.)
* Jean Itard in DSB VI.271-2; Drake, tr., Galileo Galilei, Operations of the Geometric and Military Compass pp. 26 & 34.
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