Search Results: Science & Technology from The Manhattan Rare Book Company

Very Good. FOUR AUTOGRAPH LETTERS with good content by Humphry Davy to his close friend and patron Davies Gilbert. In one letter, written on the recto of one sheet with Gilbert's address on verso, Davy mentions a recent visit to William Herschel ("... I have been very much delighted to see the activity & zeal with which Mr Herschell pursues Astronomy & the perfect state of his instruments..."); in another letter (one sheet, both sides), Davy writes emotionally to Gilbert about his health and the Presidency of the Royal Society: "...I am very anxious to learn the state of your feelings with respect to the Presidency, if what I fear must be the case the state of my health obliges me to resign...". Gilbert would indeed succeed Davy as President of the Royal Society in 1827 after Davy resigned due to illness. In the third letter (one sheet, both sides), Davy writes to Davy while convalescing with Coleridge's friend Tom Poole ("...Mr Poole my kind Host desires… Read More

Halle: Journal für Chemie und Physik. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Good. FIRST EDITION of the experimental proof of Ohm's law, "the fundamental law of electric circuits" (Dibner 63). Ohm "made a study of the laws of galvanic currents, and while investigating the relative conductivity of metals finally discovered the relation known as 'Ohm's law,' which underlies all electrical theory and measurement. The experimental proof of this law was first published in a paper in Schweigger's Journal fur Chemie und Physik, vol. xlvi. (1826), under the title of Bestimmung des Gesetzes, nach welchem Metalle die Contactelektricität leiten" (Peck and Colby, The New International Encyclopedia). "The following year Ohm published a book, entitled Die Galvanische Kette, mathematisch bearbeitet (Berlin, 1827). It contained a theoretic deduction of Ohm's law, and became far more widely known than his article of 1826, giving the experimental deduction. In fact, his… Read More

Washington, D.c.: Superintendent Of Documents Government Printing Off. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. FIRST EDITION of the first report on COBOL, the first computer programming language designed to run on all computers, regardless of make or model. With over a hundred pages of extremely rare related material. s computer use began to grow throughout the 1950's, there was rapidly developing a need for a programming language that was not computer-specific. As outlined in the introduction of this seminal report: "On May 28 and 29, 1959, a meeting was called in the Pentagon for the purpose of considering both the desireablility and the feasibility of establishing a common language for the programming of electronic computers in business-type data processing. Representatives from users, Government installations, computer manufacturers and other interested parties were present. There was almost unanimous agreement that the project was both desirable and feasible at this time. The concept of… Read More

London: Harrison and Sons. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Fine. FIRST EDITION of the first description of WIlson's famous cloud chamber, the first type of detector to show the tracks of elementary particles. Cloud chambers "developed from the work of Charles Wilson at the Cavendish Laboratory in the 1890's. He was interested in creating artificial mist, in order to investigate its effect on light, and did so by building a desktop-sized apparatus in which a glass chamber full of moist air was connected to a piston which could be suddenly moved outward, lowering the pressure and causing mist (or cloud) to form in the chamber. The mist droplets grow on tiny particles of dust in the air (cloud condensation nuclei). But, to his surprise, Wilson found that even when all the dust had been removed from the chamber, when the piston was rapidly moved out over a large distance a very thin mist still formed in the chamber. He surmised that the droplets were condensing around electrically charged particles… Read More

Leydon: Peter Leffen & Francis Moyard, 1662. First edition. contemporary vellum. Very Good. FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST TEXTBOOK OF PHYSIOLOGY. "René Descartes's Treatise of man (De homine, 1662; Traité de l'homme, 1664) was never intended to stand as a work on its own. It was one part of a much larger work, Le monde (The world). Although this was finished around 1633, Descartes did not publish it himself because he was alarmed by the Italian Inquisition's condemnation of Galileo Galilei that year. Some time after Descartes's death in 1650, his French manuscript, copies of which had circulated among his friends and correspondents, was edited and published.  The first version was a Latin translation (De homine) by Florentius Schuyl in 1662, the second the now better known 'original' French version (Traité de l'homme) edited by Descartes's self-appointed literary executor Claude Clerselier in 1664. In the seventeenth century the… Read More

London: The Royal Society, 1909. 1st Edition. Soft cover. Fine. FIRST EDITION OFFPRINT, PRESENTATION COPY, of Bohr's first published scientific paper, written while he was a 20-year-old student at Copenhagen University. Inscribed by Bohr in Danish on front wrapper to Poul Heegaard, mathematician and professor at Copenhagen University. In original wrappers. In February 1905 the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters announced a prize concerning Lord Rayleigh's 1879 theory that the surface tension of liquids could be determined from the surface vibrations of liquid jets. The problem proposed by the Academy was to perform quantitative experiments to implement Rayleigh's method. Bohr faced formidable difficulties, not least the fact that, since the university had no physics laboratory, Bohr had to perform the experiments at night (to avoid perturbations due to passing traffic) in his father's physiology laboratory. Bohr's paper was submitted on the deadline of 30 October 1906,… Read More

Berlin: Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1914. FIRST EDITION OFFPRINT. Original wrappers. Fine. FIRST EDITION, COMMERCIAL OFFPRINT ISSUE, of Einstein's important 1914 paper on the development of general relativity. "In summer 1914, Einstein felt that the new theory [general relativity] should be presented in a comprehensive review. He also felt that a mathematical derivation of the field equations that would determine them uniquely was still missing. "Both tasks are addressed in a long paper, presented in October 1914 to the Prussian Academy for publication in its Sitzungsberichte. It is entitled 'The formal foundation of the general theory of relativity'; here, for the first time, Einstein gave the new theory of relativity the epithet 'general' in lieu of the more cautious 'generalized' that he had used for the Entwurf" (Landmark Writings in Western Mathematics 1640-1940). "According to John Norton ('How Einstein Found His Field… Read More

London: Macmillan, 1939. First edition. Original wrappers. Fine. FIRST PRINTING IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS OF THE FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE DISCOVERY OF NUCLEAR FISSION. A FINE COPY. PMM 422B. "Experiments conducted in 1938 at Berlin by Hahn and Strassman were reported to Lise Meitner, an Austrian scientist who had fled to Copenhagen to escape religious persecution. She and her nephew, O.R. Frisch, working in Niels Bohr's laboratory, found the true explanation of these phenomenon. The interpolation of a neutron into the the nucleus of a uranium atom caused it to divide into two parts and to release energy amounting to about 200,000,000 electron volts. This process bore such a close similarity to the division of a living cell that Frisch suggested the use of the term 'fission' to describe it" (Printing and the Mind of Man, 422b). IN: Nature, Vol. 143, No. 3615, pp. 239-40. London: Macmillan & Co., February 11, 1939. Octavo, original wrappers; custom box. Small chip at top of… Read More

London and New York: Macmillan and Co. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH in original cloth of Hertz's collected papers on electromagnetic waves; the foundation for wireless communication. "By inducing the waves to produce an electrical spark at a distance, with no apparent connection between the oscillator and the spark gap, and by moving the sparking apparatus so that the length of the spark varied, Hertz proved beyond question the passage of electric waves through space" (Printing and the Mind of Man, 377). Originally published in German in 1892, the collected edition gathers together Hertz's important journal publications from 1887-1892 with the addition of an introduction in which Hertz surveys and analyzes his work of the past five years. PMM (Printing and the Mind of Man), 377 (for the German edition). Translated by David Evan Jones. Preface by William Thompson, Lord Kelvin. London and New York: Macmillan and Co., 1893. Octavo, original cloth;… Read More

London: Taylor and Francis, 1852. First edition. Original Wrappers. Very Good. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS of two papers containing Faraday's detailed investigations of the nature of the 'lines of force'; an extension of work he had begun in his first paper (1821) on electromagnetism. These investigations laid the foundations of field theory. "Faraday's work on electromagnetic rotations led him to take a view of electromagnetism different from that of most of his contemporaries. Where they focused on the electrical fluids and the peculiar forces engendered by their motion (Ampère's position), he was forced to consider the line of force. He did not know what it was in 1821, but he suspected that it was a state of strain in the molecules of the current carrying wire and the surrounding medium produced by the passage of an electrical 'current' (whatever that was) through the wire … It was the line of force which tied all his researches on… Read More

London: Richard and John Edward Taylor, 1839. First edition. Original cloth. Very Good. FIRST EDITIONS IN ORIGINAL CLOTH OF ALL THREE VOLUMES OF FARADAY'S MONUMENTAL EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCHES IN ELECTRICITY, THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE RECORD OF HIS ACHIEVEMENTS. PMM 308. "Faraday was both one of the greatest physicists of the nineteenth century and one of the finest experimenters of all time... He was the first to produce an electric current from a magnetic field, invented the first electric motor and dynamo, demonstrated the relation between electricity and chemical bonding, discovered the effect of magnetism on light, and discovered and named diamagnetism, the peculiar behaviour of certain substances in strong magnetic fields. He provided the experimental, and a good deal of the theoretical, foundation upon which James Clerk Maxwell erected classical electromagnetic field theory" (Printing and the Mind of Man 308; Britannica). Faraday published the results of his experiments and… Read More

Amsterdam: Johanned Jansson Waesberge. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Fine. FIRST EDITION OF ONE OF THE GREAT SCIENTIFIC CLASSICS: "Describes the invention of the air pump and the famous experiment with the Magdeburg hemispheres, in which two teams of eight horses were employed in an attempt to pull apart two copper hemispheres from which the air had been withdrawn. Guericke also describes the invention of the first electrical machine, which generated the first visible and audible electric charges" (Honeyman). "In 1650 Guericke constructed the first air pump, which he used to create a vacuum in various containers. He showed that sound would not travel in a vacuum, and furthermore that a vacuum would not support combustion or animal life. In 1654 Guericke gave an impressive demonstration in front of the emperor Ferdinand III, of the force of atmospheric pressure. Two identical copper hemispheres 12 feet (3.66 m) in diameter were joined together. When the air was pumped out, 16 horses could… Read More

London: The Royal Society, 1925. First edition. Original wrappers. Very Good. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS of Dirac's first major paper; a major achievement in the advancement of the new quantum theory. "Dirac's first step into a new quantum theory was taken late in September 1925. R H Fowler, his research supervisor, had received a proof copy of an exploratory paper by Werner Heisenberg in the framework of the old quantum theory of Bohr and Sommerfeld, which leaned heavily on Bohr's correspondence principle but changed the equations so that they involved directly observable quantities. Fowler sent Heisenberg's paper on to Dirac, who was on vacation in Bristol, asking him to look into this paper carefully. Dirac's attention was drawn to a mysterious mathematical relationship, at first sight unintelligible, that Heisenberg had reached. Several weeks later, back in Cambridge, Dirac suddenly recognized that this mathematical form had the same structure as the Poisson… Read More

London: Taylor and Francis, 1913. First edition. Original wrappers. Very Good. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS of both parts of Moseley's groundbreaking work providing the scientific basis for our understanding of atomic numbers and the ordering of the periodic table. PMM 407. "Moseley, working under Rutherford at Manchester, used the method of X-ray spectroscopy devised by the Braggs to calculate variations in the wavelength of the rays emitted by each element. These he was able to arrange in a series according to the nuclear charge of each element. Thus if the nuclear charge of hydrogen is 1, in helium it is 2, in lithium 3, and so on by regular progression to uranium at 92. These figures Moseley called atomic numbers. He pointed out that they also represented a corresponding increase in extra-nuclear electrons and that it is the number and arrangement of these electrons rather than the atomic weight that determines the properties of an element. It was now possible to base the periodic… Read More

Paris: Journal de Physique et le Radium, 1927. FIRST EDITION. Original wrappers. Very Good. FIRST EDITION IN RARE ORIGINAL WRAPPERS of the presentation of de Broglie's highly influential "pilot-wave" interpretation of quantum mechanics. "What we now know as pilot-wave theory first appears in a paper by de Broglie (1927) entitled 'Wave mechanics and the atomic structure of matter and of radiation', which was published in Journal de Physique in May 1927... In 'Structure', de Broglie presents a theory of particles as moving singularities. It is argued, on the basis of certain assumptions, that the equations of what we now call pilot-wave dynamics will emerge from this theory. At the end of the paper de Broglie proposes, as a provisional theory, simply taking the equations of pilot-wave dynamics as given, without trying to derive them from something deeper. It is this last, provisional theory that de Broglie presents a few months later at the fifth Solvay… Read More

Venice: Giovanni Battista Recurti. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. First edition, with three engraved folding plates, of Santorini's most important contribution to medical science, containing the "major discoveries for which Santorini is known eponymically" (Garrison-Morton). "This work records a number of new anatomical discoveries and corrects many errors of earlier anatomists. Santorini's skill and expertise were so outstanding that his name lives on in such anatomical structures as the accessory pancreatic ducts, risorius muscle, arytenoid cartilages, and duodenal papillae, several of which are described in this book. The text is accompanied by three folding copperplates which beautifully illustrate the musculature of the face, the pelvic musculature and genitalia of a sixteen-year-old girl with a tubal pregnacy, the external muscles of the ear, and detailed anatomy of the male genitalia and larynx" (Heirs of Hippocrates). Garrison-Morton 392; Norman 1887; Waller… Read More

Copenhagen: Jul. Gjellerup. FIRST EDITION, OFFPRINT ISSUE. Softcover, original wrappers. Very Good. FIRST EDITION, OFFPRINT ISSUE, INSCRIBED BY NIELS BOHR, of Bohr's Nobel Prize lecture, delivered on the occasion of Bohr's acceptance of the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics. An association copy: Inscribed to J.A. Christiansen, noted scientist and student of Bohr. Inscribed in ink on the half-title by Bohr (in Danish): "Hr. Docent Dr. phil J.A. Christiansen med venlig Hilsen fra Forfatteren." [English translation: "Mr. Dr. Phil J.A. Christiansen with friendly greetings from the author"]. The recipient, Dr. Jens Anton Christiansen (1888-1969) "received his Ph.D from the Technical University of Denmark in 1921 and studied with Niels Bohr. He was the first to publish the term 'chain reaction,' which appeared in his doctoral thesis, Studies in Reaction Kinetics. Dr. Christiansen became Professor of Chemistry at the Technical University in 1931 and Head of the… Read More

Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1879. First edition offpring. modern wrappers. Fine. FIRST EDITION, SCARCE OFFPRINT, ONE OF MAXWELL'S MAJOR PAPERS ON GAS THEORY AND STATISTICAL MECHANICS. "Maxwell's enthusiastic follower Ludwig Boltzmann had published two superb papers on gas theory in 1868 and 1872. Taking Maxwell's idea of the velocity distribution of molecules in a gas, he had derived a more general law for their energy distribution-now known as the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution. He had also generalised Maxwell's principle for the equipartition of energy, showing that it should be divided equally not only between modes of linear and rotational movement but among all the independent components of motion in a system. "Maxwell had inspired Boltzmann; now he was inspired in turn. The new results were wonderful... Maxwell responded with a masterful paper, On Boltzmann's Theorem on the Average Distribution of Energy in a System of Material Points. This work, more… Read More

London: Taylor & Francis. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Fine. FIRST EDITION of one of the most important papers in the history of statistics, introducing the 'chi-squared' test of goodness of fit, "one of the most useful of all statistical tests" and "one of Pearson's greatest single contributions to statistical methodology" (DSB). "Specification or stochastic modeling of data is an important step in statistical analysis of data. Karl Pearson was the first to recognize this problem and introduce criterion, in a paper published in 1900, to examine whether the observed data support a given specification. He called it chi-squared goodness-of-fit test, which motivated research in testing of hypotheses and estimation of unknown parameters and led to the development of statistics as a separate discipline... In an article entitled "Trial by Number", [Ian] Hacking says that the goodness of fit chi-square test introduced by Karl Pearson (1900) 'ushered in a… Read More

London: Richard and John E. Taylor. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Fine. FIRST EDITION of the derivation of Joule's Law, one of the fundamental laws of electricity. Joule, "in the paper now under consideration, was the first to announce the definite law that 'when a current of voltaic electricity is propagated along a metallic conductor, the heat evolved in a given time is proportional to the resistance of the conductor multiplied by the square of the electric intensity,' i.e. electric current. In the same paper he showed that the law applies, when proper allowance is made for certain disturbances, to heat produced in electrolytes. The paper also contained the first reference to a 'standard of resistance;' this consisted of a coil of ten feet of copper wire .024 inch in thickness. "These experiments contained the germs of Joule's second great discovery, the equivalence of heat and energy, which he fully developed later. But he had already made it clear that the energy… Read More