QUESITI ET INVENTIONI DIVERSE de Nicolo Tartaglia, di novo restampati con una gionta al sesto libro, nella quale si mostra duoi modi di redur una citta inespugnabile. by TARTAGLIA, Niccolo (Tartalea, Fontana).: - 1554

In Venetia: per Nicolo de Bascarini ad instantia & requisitione & a proprie spese de Nicolo Tartaglia Autore, 1554.. SECOND EDITION 1554, imprint from colophon, Italian text, small 4to, approximately 220 x 150 mm, 8½ x 6 inches, large woodcut portrait of the author on the title page, 40 woodcut illustrations in the text plus an additional strip of paper bearing a repeat illustration pasted to fore-edge of leaf S3r as in all copies of the 1554 edition, numerous diagrams, 11 historiated initials, leaves: [4], 5-128 leaves, numbered on rectos only, making a total of 254 pages, signature H is duplicated i.e. pages 29-32, collated and guaranteed complete, bound in modern half leather over patterned paper boards, 3 raised bands, blind rules and gilt title to spine, new endpapers. Pale stain to margins throughout up to leaf 104, then slightly heavier stains to leaf 125, also a smaller darker brown stain in the upper margins sometimes affecting text but with no loss of legibility, 1 small inkspot to text with loss of 3 letters, small brown spot to pasted on illustration, tiny hole in 2 margins. Binding tight and firm. First published in 1546 the second edition was the first to contain the Addendum to Book VI, which is an early important treatise on fortification. Niccolo Fontana Tartaglia (1499-1557), born in Brescia, was an Italian mathematician who originated the science of ballistics which he first treated in his earlier work Nova Scientia. The first two books in the Quesiti consist of dialogues on this subject, the first with the cannon founder Alberghetto di Alberghetti, the third book is on gunpowder, the fourth on military formations in battle, the fifth on the geometer's compass is a dialogue with his friend Richard Wentworth, Henry VIII's envoy in Venice (the entire book is dedicated to Henry VIII of England), the sixth, as noted, on fortifications, the seventh and eighth are on mechanics and the final ninth book is on problems in arithmetic and ends with the famous correspondence with Cardan on their rival claims to have been the first to solve cubic equations. See: The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science & Medicine by Diana H. Hook & Jeremy M. Norman, Volume 2, page 749, No. 2054 & 2055; Cockle, Bibliography of Military Books up to 1642, No.660; Adams, Catalogue of Books Printed in Europe 1501-1600, Volume II, No. T184; Fabrizio Govi, I Classici Che Hanno Fatto L'Italia, page 82, No. 85; Spaulding & Karpinski, Early Books in the University of Michigan Libraries, page 3, No.15; The Haskell Norman Library of Science and Medicine, Part 1, page 192, No. 202. MORE IMAGES ATTACHED TO THIS LISTING, ALL ZOOMABLE. FURTHER IMAGES ON REQUEST. POSTAGE AT COST.