Rare first edition of this landmark of cryptography, “the first printed book on the subject” (Kahn), here in an example heavily annotated in several early modern hands, with its two woodcut title pages decorated in contemporary hand-color, and all preserved in a fine, stamped German binding dated 1587. The only..... More about Polygraphiae libri sex

Rare first edition of the author’s first work, generally regarded as the most important treatise on mechanics since Archimedes and a critical influence on Galileo. The work is notable for its commitment to establishing mechanics on a rigorously mathematical basis, for its powerful argument that mechanics and statics are separate..... More about Mechanicorum Liber

Rare first edition of this illustrated treatise on instrument making by the Ulm mathematician and military architect Johann Faulhaber (1580-1635), a work principally important in the history of science and technology for its engraved technical illustrations of Galileo Galilei’s (1564-1624) famous ‘proportional compass’ – the first such illustrations to appear..... More about Newe geometrische und perspectivische Inventiones etlicher sonderbahrer Instrument …

First edition of this illustrated Italian translation of the Roman poet Persius (CE 34-62) by Galileo’s correspondent, friend, and fellow member of the Accademia Linceo, containing “the first illustrations prepared with a microscope that were set forth in a printed book” (Singer p. 148), including the anatomical ‘bee’ engraving made..... More about Persio tradotto in verso sciolto e dichiarato da Francesco Stelluti, Accademia Linceo da Fabbriano

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 about De mundo nostro Sublunari Philosophia Nova. Opus posthumum

Scarce augmented edition of this work on the theory of machines and the nature of gravity by the young Jesuit Paolo Casati. The work imaginatively envisions a Latin dialogue between three great physicists of the preceding generation, all recently dead in the 1640s: Galileo; Marin Mersenne, his greatest champion outside... More about Terra machinis mota dissertationes geometricae, mechanicae, physicae, hydrostaticae

First edition (? see below) of Becher’s popular alchemical handbook, which “rapidly became a standard text on elements, principles, and chemical processes” (DSB II.550) containing an engraved representation of the Prague Medal as well as a title engraving of the chemist with allegorical figures. “Becher’s views on chemistry have much..... More about Institutiones Chimicae prodromae: Oedipus Chimicus obscuriorum terminorum et principiorum...

First edition, and a fine copy, of one of the great classics of science. Complete copies, such as ours, have become difficult to find on the market. This book is notable for its importance in the fields of electricity and air pressure and for its account of the discovery of... More about Experimenta Nova (ut vocantur) Magdeburgica de Vacuo Spatio Primùm à R.P. Gaspare Schotto . . ....

Extremely rare copy of a classic work produced in 1661 during Japan’s intellectual awakening by the important mathematician Isomura Yoshinori (d. 1710). This much enlarged third edition (1684) includes new uses for pi, such as novel calculations of the surface of a sphere. It solves other practical problems, for instance... More about Zōho Sanpō ketsugishō, 5 kan

Two important and generously illustrated botanical works produced by respected Linnaean correspondents at the Imperial Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg. Amman’s Stirpium rariorum contains useful descriptions of 285 plants from Eastern Europe and “Ruthenia” (now Ukraine), enhanced with 35 clear engravings. According to Hunt, Amman “made a notable contribution..... More about Stirpium rariorum in Imperio Rutheno sponte provenientium icones et descriptiones

Very rare first and sole edition of the first treatise published by the pioneering French mineralogist Jean-Baptiste Romé de L’Isle (1736-1780), and his sole work on marine biology, concerning the “movement, generation and nature” of the freshwater polyp. In the present work Romé hypothesizes, drawing on observations by the naturalist..... More about Lettre de M. Derome Delisle, a M. Bertrand. Sur les polyps d’eau-douce

First edition of this lavishly illustrated mining classic describing an amalgamation process for removing gold and silver from various ores. As the process did not require the usual smelting of the ore, it saved an enormous quantity of fuel and was widely adapted throughout the Habsburg Empire and elsewhere in... More about Ueber das Anquicken der gold-und silberhaltigen Erze, Rohsteine, Schwarkupfer und Huttenspeise

Contemporary sammelband of 26 rare first-edition tracts relating to the early development of the metric system during the French First Republic. The volume contains titles published in Paris between 1793 and 1799 (usually dated according to the Revolutionary Calendar), several of which include large folding tables and engravings illustrating problem... More about Mesures Républicaines (spine