BRISBANE (General Sir T. M. [Thomas Makdougall]):

Observations Magnetical and Meteorological made at Makerstoun in Scotland. In the Observatory of General Sir T. M. Brisbane, Bart. Under the Direction of John A. Broun. 1841 and 1842

Edinburgh: Printed by Neill and Company, 1845. 4to, 286 x 219mms., pp. liii [liv blank], 165 [166 blank], engraved plate before text, contemporary quarter cloth, boards, paper labels on spine; ex-library with various library stamps. Major General Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane, 1st Baronet, GCB, GCH, FRS, FRSE (23 July 1773 – 27 January 1860), was a British Army officer, administrator, and astronomer. He had an observatory built at his home in Scotland in 1808 and he made a number of contributions to navigation in the succeeding years. Brisbane was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1828 and was elected president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1833. He was made a baronet in 1836 and attained the rank of general in 1841. He was the governor of New South Wales from 1821 to 1825, and what is now the city of Brisbane is named after him, though it was a penal colony at the time. The present volume is an extract from Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, volume 17.

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Book number: 9192

Catalogue: Science

Keywords: science mathematics prose

LA CHAMBRE (Marin Cureau de ):

Discours sur les Causes du Desbordement du Nil Par Monsieur De la Chambre.

A Paris, Chez Jacques Dallin..., 1665. 12mo, 157 x 90 mms., pp. [xl], 288, 291 - 360, with separate drop-title for "Discours de la Natue Divine selon La Philsophie Platonique," register and pagination continuous, engaved frontispiece, folding engraved map between pages 296 and 297, contemporary calf, spine ornately gilt in compartment, dark red leather label; front joint cracked, spine chipped at top and base and bottom panel faulty, ex-library with withdraw stamp on verso of title-page, tiny ms. purchase note at top of front paste-down end-paper, and, in the same hand, "B drandon" on the top margin of the front free end-paper. The French physician and philosopher Marin Cureau de la Chambre (1594 – 1669) was said to be able to judge human character from a person's physical appearance, an ability that Louis XIV admired. This skill is probably what led to his major work, five volumes on physiognamy, L'art de connaître les hommes par la physionomie. The present volume argues that the cause of the overflowing of the nile is down to saltpetre in the water. Even some of his contemporaries thought that he was wrong, but this is an early instance of a historical approach to climate and climate change.

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Book number: 9400

Catalogue: Science

Keywords: science Egypt prose

POPE (William):

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.

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.

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Book number: 8991

Catalogue: Science

Keywords: science engineering prose

ROHAULT (Jacques):

Rohault's System of Natural Philosophy, Illustrated with Dr. Samuel Clarke's Notes Taken mostly out of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy. Done into English By John Clarke. The The Third Edition.

London, Printed for James, John, and Paul Knapton..., 1735. 2 volumes. 8vo, 197 x 118 mms., pp. [xxxii], 285 [286 adverts]; 292 [293 - 315 Index, 316 adverts], 14 folding engraved plates at end of volume 1, 13 folding engraved plates at end of volume 2, for a total of 27 plates as called for, title-pages in red and black, contemporary calf; lacks titling labels, joints a bit strained, but a good copy. The contemporary names "Jho [John] Taylor" and "Jno [also John] Holman," with confirming ownership inscription on front paste-down end-paper of volume 1, "John Holman/ His Book/ Given Him/ By his Father/ Andrew Holman/ Anno 1762 Domini," with Holman's autograph on the title-page and that of "J. W. Taylor" as well. Taylor is probably the oculist John Taylor (1703 - 1772), who operated on such celebrities as Bach, Gibbon, and Handel, and perhaps contributed to Handel's death. Samuel Johnson said of him, hat his life showed "an instance of how far impudence may carry ignorance." On the rear paste-down end-paper of volume 1, a contemporary hand has written: "Good men as well as bad/ Have sometimes fortune sad." The French Cartesian Jacques Rohault (1618 - 1672) published his Traité de Physique in 1671; it was widely used a a textbook for the next 50 years and was reprinted more than twenty-five times between 1671 and 1739. John Ellis, a tutor at Caius College, Cambridge, asked Samuel Clarke (1675 - 1729) to translate the work into Latin, with editions published in 1697, 1702 and 1710. Clarke's brother, John Clarke (1682 - 1757), a distinguished Cambridge mathematician then translated the work into Englsh; the first edition was published in 1723, followed by a second edition in 1729. The work of the two brothers played a major part in moving Cambridge's mathematicians and physicists away from Cartesianism and towards Newtonianism. See Laura Benítez Grobet: "Jacques Rohault's system of natural philosophy," in Nudler, Oscar (ed.), Controversy Spaces: A Model of Scientific and Philosophical Change (2011), Chapter 6.

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Book number: 7931

Catalogue: Science

Keywords: science physics prose

RUMFORD (Sir Benjamin Thompson), Count of:

Essays, Political, Economical and Philosophical. The Third Edition. [Volume 1].

London: Printed for T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies..., 1797, 1798, [?1802]. 3 volumes in 2. 8vo, pp. [viii], 464; [vi], 496; iv, 191 [192 blank, 193 - 194 adverts], 6 engraved plates in volume 1, 12 engraved plates (including one folding) in volume 2, 13 engraved plates in third volume, recently recased in modern grey boards, black lettering to spine. There is no title-page as such for the third volume, which begins on a1r with the Advertisement. It is not clear that this is volume 3 until the drop-title for Essay X (On the Construction of Kitchen Fire-Places) on B1r, where the lower running volume number is "Vol. III." The volume probably wasn't issued with the first edition of volume 2 without a title-page, but it would probably have been a singleton. In any case the volumes as they are contain the first ten essays of a collection that eventually reached four volumes. The tenth essay is in two parts and comprises 191 pages. Rumford's topics are wide-ranging including g essays on the poor, on food, on chimneys and fire-places, on fuel and heat, and on kitchens.

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Book number: 4634

Catalogue: Science

Keywords: science technology prose

WALKER (Ralph), of Jamaica:

A Treatise on Magnetism, with a Description and Explanation of a Meridional and Azimuth Compass, for ascertaining the Quantity of Variation, without any calculations whatever, at any time of the day, also improvements upon compasses in general. With Table of Variation for All Latitudes and Longitudes.

London: Printed by R. Hindmarsh...Sold by George Adams..., 1794. Large 8vo, 208 x 124 mms., pp. 9 [10 blank, 11 - 12 Contents], [9] - 226, 7 folding engraved plates, recently rebound in quarter calf, marbled boards, gilt spine, red leather labels; lacking the final leaf with the directions to the binder, but a very good copy. "In 1794 Ralph Walker 'of Jamaica' travelled to London 'for the purpose of laying my meridional and azimuth compass, and improvements upon compasses in general, before the Board of Longitude. Although Walker was a seaman and his inventive capacities were directed towards navigational problems, he included in his Treatise on Magnetism an appendix on land surveying. He felt it his duty to Jamaica and the West Indies, he said, 'to point out what advantage this improvement in compasses may be of, respecting the surveying of lands, and fixing the boundaries of estates and new settlements.' The burden of Walker's advice rested on his calculation of magnetic variation over time" (Higman: Jamaica Surveyed). The work was noticed in The Critical Review for 1794, but with only a cursory assessment of Walker's book. The British Critic, and Quarterly Theological Review for 1795 was sympathetic to Walker's undertaking: "Some faults might be pointed out in Mr. Walker's style, but he must be a very ill-natured critic who should notice a few blemishes in a work written principall for those whose minds are very little cultivated, and which conveys information of very general importance."

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Book number: 9130

Catalogue: Science

Keywords: science technology prose