A very appealing copy – large and genuine – of the rare first edition of this famous and influential illustrated book (Dibner, Heralds 38) highly unusual to find in such fresh condition as here. De la Pirotechnia is “the first comprehensive book on the fire-using arts and one of the... More

Rare first Italian edition and first edition in any vulgate language of “the first handbook of modern systematic mineralogy” (Horblit/Grolier, Latin no. 1546). “Agricola’s most important work...after De re metallica itself, was De Natura Fossilium which was the first systematic mineralogy... The De Ortu et Causis Subterraneorum is considered the..... More

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

Very rare first edition, second issue of this understudied work, “apparently the earliest Italian imprint to depict and discuss the Copernican system” (Gingerich) by the Cologne-born Professor of Mathematics at Padua. The work includes a printed diagram of the geo-heliocentric system of Martianus Capella (41r) as well as a diagram..... More

Scarce first Latin edition (following the original German by a year) of one of the most widely diffused Northern European surveying and drafting books, of great interest for the history of scale drawing, architectural drafting, and precision instrumentation, by the Flemish-born polymath and instrument maker Levinus Hulsius (1546-1606). The third... More

Rare first edition of Pierre Gassendi’s (1592-1655) important illustrated treatise on inertial mechanics. Written in the form of two letters addressed to the scholar and keeper of the king’s library Pierre Depuy (1582-1651), the De motu impresso “contains the first precise published formulation of the principle of inertia” as recently..... More

Scarce augmented edition of this illustrated technological classic, "second only to Agricola in the number of original contributions to the literature of mining and metallurgy and the beauty of the graphic treatment of the crafts." - Dibner 89 (1574) It is testimony to the work's usefulness as a practical handbook... More

Scarce German edition and unusually fine copy in its original binding of this machinery book devoted to pumps, presses and milling machinery by the Nuremberg architect Ber. This is unusual among Baroque machine books for primarily containing machines that had actually been realized, not simply the fantasies of those inventors... More

The development of mechanical farm implements was one of the important achievements of 18th-century technology. The "Academia dei Georgofili" was formed in Florence (where one of its buildings remains) for the purpose of improving Tuscan agriculture. In this book, Giuseppe Rigacci describes a new sowing machine and a hoe... More

Rare first edition of the Dutch physicist Martin van Marum’s (1750-1837) spectacular foundational work in high-energy electrical research and a landmark in scientific illustration from an era in which experimental data increasingly took the form of fleeting, transient effects highly resistant to standard methods of artistic representation. Appearing just after..... More

First edition of this experimental classic, which attempted to describe and visualize the production of sound from solid bodies, “the foundation of the modern science of acoustics” (PMM). Chladni devised a method of representing vibrating bodies by means of sand figures (still known as “Chladni figures”) by spreading sand over..... More

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

Rare first and only edition – illustrated with 2 large folding lithographs – of an ambitious early 19th-century project proposal for improving the navigability of the Seine between Paris and the port of Le Havre. Jacques-Joseph Frimot (1790-1866), hydraulic engineer of the Corps Royal des Ponts et Chaussées, here confronts..... More