Author: POPE (William):
Title: The Triumphal Chariot of Friction Or A Familiar Elucidation of the Origin of Magnet Attraction &c. &c. With Plates from Drawings made by the Author.
Description: London Printed for the Author & Sold by hi at the Ball Lombard Street & may also be had of every respectable bookseller, 1829. FIRST AND ONLY EDITION. 4to, 283 x 215 mms., pp. vii [viii blank], 108, engraved title-page, 11 engraved plates including title-page with profile of author, with plate no. 2 canceled, "as its contents were embrace n the other plates" (page 105), bound in library buckram; all plates foxed, most noticeably the title-page, rear joint crudely repaired, ex-library, with various library stamps, and the bookplate of the library of The Institution of Civil Engineers on the front post-down end-paper The logician, mathematician, and historian Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) had a copy of the amazingly wrong-headed book in his library, apparently given to him by Olinthus Gregory (1774-1841). De Morgan described Pope as "the author was one of the crackedest men of his time," The loony science was widely ridiculed when the work was published, with The Dublin Review not mentioning the author's name in the "hope [that] the author has seen his folly...." Pope purports to describe his "'patent dipping needle mariner's compass,' together with investigations into the origins of the earth, the theory of tides, the perpetual lamp, and perspective." Ellen G. Gartrell: Electricity, magnetism, and animal magnetism : a checklist of printed sources, 1600-1850 (1975), 906.

Keywords: science engineering prose


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