Extremely rare first and only edition of this polemical volume of Italian geometry, responding to recent appropriations of the work of great French mathematician François Viète. In 1644 and 1648, respectively, the Venetian amateur astronomer Antonio Santini had published Supplementi Francisci Vietae and Inclinationum Appendix, which utilized Viète’s algebra to..... More

Scarce first edition of Gilbert's only other published work, whose first section contains "an extension of the cosmological ideas Gilbert introduced into the last section of de Magnete; it is dependent on the latter work for much of its vocabulary and basic assumptions..." (DSB V.397). Posthumously published and edited by..... More

First French edition of this first-hand account of 17th-century Vietnam (first Italian ed. 1650), which played an important role in fostering French interest in the region. Rhodes, who earned the favorable opinion of Louis XIV, is often heralded as the founder of Vietnamese Christianity, and remembered for his important dictionary..... More

First edition of this exceptionally rare and remarkable book on nebulae, the first of its kind, illustrated with striking white-on-black woodcuts. It is also a work of profound cosmological speculation placing it at the forefront of astronomical thought in the 17th century. Giovanni Battista Odierna (1597–1660) suggests in this work..... More

Rare edition and a fine copy of Galgemayr's very influential text describing the construction & use of two instruments, a proportional compass and a lineal compass for the measurement of volumes and surfaces. The former, closely resembling Galileo's proportional compass, was a popular calculating device used throughout the 17th C...... More

Rare complete suite and an unusually fine copy of the quintessential 17th-century Italian Cry book, creatively adapting depictions of Bologna trades by Caracci made at the end of the 16th century into a full-fledged book of cries. Caracci's drawings were engraved by Simon Guillain in 1646 under the title of..... More

Scarce edition of this important treatise on perspective by the most scientifically rigorous of 17th-century French theorists, of particular interest for its contention that “the illustrations to earlier treatises were often defective” (Millard), thus making it the first work on the subject to treat the problem of didactic illustration in..... More

First edition in English, first issue, of the most famous biography in the Portuguese language. D. João de Castro (b. 1500, Lisbon) was a sailor, soldier, scientist and cartographer. At an early age he became a brilliant humanist, studying mathematics under Pedro Núñez. After fighting at Tangiers and Tunis, he..... More

Rare, anonymously authored German-language treatise on the art of surveying, first published in 1616, with copious practical information on measuring any type of terrain. Extensively illustrated with more than 100 woodcut geometrical diagrams and woodcut images of surveying instruments, the work shares much in common with the popular German manuals..... More

The very rare third, enlarged, and best edition of Bartoli's L'Asia descritta. This work was intended to cover the Jesuit experience in the Far East, including Japan and China since the Order's first arrival there in the mid-sixteenth century. The volume on China appeared just before Kircher's China illustrata, and..... More

An attractive example of the rare first edition of one of the earliest and most influential anatomical treatises published expressly for the use of artists, with text by the famed theorist, art historian and connoisseur Roger de Piles (1635-1709) and fine, full-page plates engraved after Vesalius by François Tortebat (c..... More

Unpublished 17th-century manuscript of formal student notes – likely from the University of Paris – relating to a curriculum of lectures on Logic, Ethics and Moral Philosophy. While first-hand records of university pedagogy from this period are rather rare in any form, the present manuscript is of special interest for..... More

Scarce second, much augmented edition (first 1664) of this early tract on New York. The author answers the charge by the Dutch of instigating war with England, as a result of which New Amsterdam was retained by the latter. The original edition was a pamphlet of 21 pages; the present..... More