Grundsätze der Mechanik vom Gleichgewicht und der Bewegung: mit Anwendung auf einzelne Probleme des Maschienenwesens, namentlich auf das Perpetuum mobile etc.; aus dem Französischen übersetzt

Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1805. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. 1st Edition. Hardcover. 8vo (199 x 115 mm). xxviii, 303 [1] pp., 2 folding engraved plates. Bound in late 19th century cloth over blue card boards, spine lettered and ruled in black (minor soiling of spine, extremities rubbed, corners bumped and scuffed). Text crisp and clean throughout. Provenance: from the Library of the Sadi-Carnot family (catalogue of the sale "Carnot : la bibliothèque d"une dynastie" by Astrid Guillon, Paris 27 Oct. 2022, lot 86). A near pristine copy internally. ----

VERY RARE FIRST GERMAN EDITION of "Principes fondamentaux de l'équilibre et du movement" translated from a new edition, published in Paris in 1803. Itself a work that first appeared in Dijon in 1783 under the title Essai sur les machines en général. The author explains in the preface that he has made changes in the light of recent discoveries. "These developments have necessitated a new order in the subjects, and made the writing more voluminous. . . the result is a work that is in some ways entirely new. . ." (see DSB III, p.75 and 78). "Carnot remains one of the very few men of science and of politics whose career in each domain deserves serious attention on its own merits" (DSB). Famous as the French Revolution's 'Organizer of Victory,' who in 1793 successfully united fourteen armies to defend France against an immense European horde, Carnot is equally well known as a mechanical engineer and mathematician, being the author of this first theoretical treatise on engineering mechanics, in which he was the first to prove explicitly the loss of kinetic energy in the collision of bodies. Carnot's abstract approach to the problems of mechanics makes him one of the important forerunners in the field of the physics of energy. - Visit our website to see more images!