Sophia Rare Books Flæsketorvet 68, 1711 København V, Denmark Tel: (+45)27628014 Fax: (+45) 69918469 www.sophiararebooks.com (The descriptions in this list are abbreviated; full descriptions are available) Stand no. 306 San Francisco International Antiquarian Book Fair 15-17 February 2013 Astronomy . .14, 16, 22, 31, 50, 56 Chemistry . 3, 9, 10, 25, 39, 42, 43, 52, 61, 54 Commercial arithmetics, probability, statistics . 6, 12, 18, 41, 49, 55 Communications, Computing, Information . .4, 5, 20, 59, 63, 64 Electricity, magnetism . 8, 17, 33, 38 Geometry . 2, 21, 26, 30 Mechanics, machinery, technology . 1, 4, 5, 48 Medicine, Biology . 39, 44, 52, 54, 61 Mathematics . 2, 6, 11, 12, 19, 21, 24, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 36, 37, 41, 45, 50, 62, 63, 64 Navigation. 15, 38, 46, 50 Optics. ..9, 22, 31, 35, 40, 51, 58 Physics . 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 17, 19, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 31, 33, 34, 35, 38, 40, 47, 48, 51, 53, 57, 60 PMM*, Dibner, Horblit, Evans, Sparrow . 1*, 8, 12*, 16, 23*, 25*, 26*, 28, 30, 33*, 40, 41, 43*, 44, 46*, 51, 52, 53*, 62* Special copies, inscribed, provenance . 21, 23, 24, 29, 36, 39, 42, 49 20th century science . .7, 13, 20, 27, 28, 34, 37, 39, 47, 53, 57, 60 PMM 79 - The first systematic treatise on mining and metallurgy 1. AGRICOLA, Gerorgius. De Re Metallica. Basel: Froben & Bischoff, 1556. $60,000 A fine copy, in contemporary binding, of “the first systematic treatise on mining and metallurgy and one of the first technological books of modern times” (Printing and the Mind of Man). “The De Re Metallica embraces everything connected with the mining industry and metallurgical processes, including administration, prospecting, the duties of officials and companies and the manufacture of glass, sulphur and alum. The magnificent series of two hundred and seventy-three large woodcut illustrations by Hans Rudolph Manuel Deutsch add to its value. Some of the most important sections are those on mechanical engineering and the use of water-power, hauling, pumps, ventilation, blowing of furnaces, transport of ores, etc., showing a very elaborate technique.” (PMM). Copies in unrestored contemporary binding are rare. ❧PMM 79, Horblit 2b, Dibner 88, Sparrow 4. Large-paper copy, uncut in the original wrappers 2. APOLLONIUS of Perga. Conicorum Lib. V. VI. VII. Florence: Cocchini, 1661. $12,000 Editio princeps of books V-VII of the Conics, the most original parts of Apollonius’s treatise on conic sections. Books I-IV were translated and published in 1537, and at the time it was believed that the remaining books were lost. “In the first half of the seventeenth century the Medici family acquired an Arabic manuscript containing Books V-VII of Apollonius’s Conics, which had been lost up to that time. In 1658, with the help of the Maronite scholar Abraham Ecchellensis, Giovanni Borelli prepared an edited Latin translation of the manuscript, which was published three years later. This was a valuable addition to the mathematical knowledge of the time, for whereas Books I-IV of the Conics dealt with information already known to Apollonius’s predecessors, Books V-VII were largely original. Book V discusses normals to conics and contains Apollonius’s proof for the construction of the evolute curve; Book VI treats congruent and similar conics and segments of conics; Book VII is concerned with propositions about inequalities between various functions of conjugate diameters” (Norman). “The fifth book reveals better than any other the giant intellect of its author. Difficult questions of maxima and minima, of which few examples are found in earlier works, are here treated most exhaustively. The subject investigated is to find the longest and shortest lines that can be drawn from a given point to a conic. Here are also found the germs of the subject of evolutes and centres of osculation” (Cajori, A History of Mathematics). The sheets of our copy measure 368 x 255 mm, significantly more than all other copies of which we have been able to find descriptions. ❧Norman 58, Honeyman 119, De Vitry 29. A foundation work of physical chemistry 3. AVOGADRO, Amadeo. Fisica de’ Corpi Ponderabili ossia Trattato della Costituzione Generale de’ Corpi del Cavaliere. 4 vols. Torino: Stamperia Reale, 1837-41. First edition. $28,000 A very fine set of one of the great milestones of chemical literature. This monumental work is the only major publication of Avogadro (1776- 1856), one of the founders of physical chemistry in the early 19th century. The famous hypothesis which bears his name - that equal volumes of all gases and vapors contain the same number of ultimate molecules at the same pressure and temperature - demonstrated the link between Gay- Lussac’s law of volume and Dalton’s atomic theory, and provided a much needed key to the problems of 19th-century chemistry by distinguishing between atoms and molecules. The very title of this book indicates that he was concerned with atomic weights. His molecular hypothesis is widely considered to be Italy’s great contribution to chemistry in the 19th century. Emil Offenbacher, the distinguished dealer who specialized in chemistry, wrote (cat. 39, item 4, 1986) ‘a complete set is today of great rarity’. ❧Norman 89; Honeyman 168; Neville Historical Chemical Library 52. The very rare pre-publication offprint 4. BABBAGE, Charles. On a Method of Expressing by Signs the Action of Machinery. London: W. Nicol, 1826. First edition. $12,800 Offprint issue of “Babbage’s first publication of his system of mechanical notation that enabled him to describe the logic and operation of his machines on paper as they would be fabricated in metal.” (Norman). Babbage later stated that ‘Without the aid of this language I could not have invented the Analytical Engine; nor do I believe that any machinery of equal complexity can ever be contrived without the assistance of that or some other equivalent language. The Difference Engine No. 2 … is entirely described by its aid’. “While making designs for the Difference Engine, Babbage found great difficulty in ascertaining from ordinary drawings – plans and elevations – the state of rest or motion of individual parts as computation proceeded: that is to say the following in detail succeeding stages of a machine’s action. This led him to develop a mechanical notation which provided a systematic method for labeling parts of a machine, classifying each part as fixed or moveable; a formal method for indicating the relative motions of the several parts which was easy to follow; and means for relating notations and drawings so that they might illustrate and explain each other. As the calculating engines developed the notation became a powerful but complex formal tool. Although its scope was much wider than logical systems, the mechanical notation was the most powerful formal method for describing switching systems until Boolean algebra was applied to the problem in the middle of the twentieth century. In its mature form the mechanical notation was to comprise three main components; a systematic method for preparing and labeling complex mechanical drawings; timing diagrams; and logic diagrams, which show the general flow of control.” (Hyman). ❧ Origins of Cyberspace, no. 37 (ordinary journal issue, i.e., not the offprint as here). The most important paper in the in the history of digital computing 5. BABBAGE, Charles. & LOVELACE, Ada. Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage. London: Richard & John Taylor, 1843. $37,500 In 1840 Babbage traveled to Torino to present to a group of Italian scientists an account of his Analytical Engine. In attendance at Babbage’s lecture was the young Italian mathematician Luigi Federico Menabrea (later Prime Minister of Italy), who prepared from his notes an account of the principles of the Analytical Engine, which he published in French in 1842. “After the appearance of Menabrea’s paper, the daughter of Lord Byron, Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, became interested in preparing an English translation… At Babbage’s suggestion, Lady Lovelace added seven explanatory notes to her translation, which run three times the length of the original. Because Babbage never published a detailed description of the Analytical Engine, Ada’s translation of Menabrea’s paper, with its lengthy explanatory notes, represents the most complete contemporary account in English of the intended design and operation of the first programmable digital computer. Her annotated translation has been called ‘the most important paper in the in the history of digital computing before modern times’ (Allan George Bromley). Babbage considered this paper a complete summary of the mathematical aspects of the machine, proving ‘that the whole of the development and operations of Analysis are now capable of being executed by machinery’. As part of his contribution to the project, Babbage supplied Ada with algorithms for the solution of various problems. These he had worked out years ago, except for one involving Bernoulli numbers, which was new. Ada illustrated these algorithms in her notes in the form of charts detailing the stepwise sequence of events as the hypothetical machine would progress through a string of instructions input from punched cards. These procedures, and the procedures published in the original edition of Menabrea’s paper, were the first published examples of computer ‘programs’.” (Norman). Theory of speculation 6. BACHELIER, Louis. Calcul des Probabilités. Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1912. $4,000 Very rare first edition of Bachelier’s first book, in which he elaborated and further developed the ideas from his celebrated thesis Théorie de la Spéculation (1900). Bachelier considered this book as the first to surpass Laplace’s great treatise Théorie Analytique des Probabilités (1812). Louis Bachelier (1870- 1946) is nowadays generally credited with being the first person to model the stochastic process now called Brownian motion, which was part of his PhD thesis.