Search Results: Titles starting with G from SOPHIA RARE BOOKS

London: for William and John Innys, 1720. First edition. EXTENDING NEWTON"S TREATMENT OF HIGHER PLANE CURVES. First edition, very rare in commerce, of Maclaurin's first book, dedicated to Newton and bearing his imprimatur as president of the Royal Society. Maclaurin is best known for his Treatise of Fluxions (1742), "the earliest logical and systematic publication of the Newtonian methods. It stood as a model of rigor until the appearance of Cauchy's Cours d'Analyse in 1821" (DSB). "In 1719 Maclaurin (1698-1746) visited London, where he was well received in the scientific circles of the capital and where he met Newton. On a second visit he met and formed a lasting friendship with Martin Folkes, who became president of the Royal Society in 1741, Maclaurin was meanwhile actively working on his Geometrica organica, which was published in 1720 with Newton's imprimatur. Geometrica organica, sive descriptio linearum curvarum universalis dealt with the general properties of conics and of the higher plane… Read More

London: for William and John Innys, 1720. First edition. INSCRIBED PRESENTATION COPY. First edition, very rare in commerce, of Maclaurin's first book, dedicated to Newton and bearing his imprimatur as president of the Royal Society; this is a presentation copy, inscribed by Maclaurin. Maclaurin is best known for his Treatise of Fluxions (1742), "the earliest logical and systematic publication of the Newtonian methods. It stood as a model of rigor until the appearance of Cauchy's Cours d'Analyse in 1821" (DSB). "In 1719 Maclaurin (1698-1746) visited London, where he was well received in the scientific circles of the capital and where he met Newton. On a second visit he met and formed a lasting friendship with Martin Folkes, who became president of the Royal Society in 1741, Maclaurin was meanwhile actively working on his Geometrica organica, which was published in 1720 with Newton's imprimatur. Geometrica organica, sive descriptio linearum curvarum universalis dealt with the general properties of… Read More

Bologna: Heirs of Evangelista Dozza, 1653. First edition. Hardcover. THE METHOD OF INDIVISIBLES. Second edition (first, 1635) of Cavalieri's text containing the discovery of the 'method of indivisibles', one of the most important forerunners of the integral calculus. Book II of the work includes the statement of 'Cavalieri's principle' for the determination of areas and volumes, which considers an area as made up of an indefinite number of equidistant parallel line segments ('omnes lineae'), and a solid as made up of an indefinite number of parallel plane areas. It states that, if two planar figures are contained between a pair of parallel lines, and if the lengths of the two segments cut by them from any line parallel to the including lines are always in a given ratio, then the areas of the two planar pieces are also in this ratio (there is an analogous principle for the determination of volumes). Cavalieri's principle provided a simple and effective alternative to the Archimedean method of… Read More

[Chicago: Western Society of Engineers], 1897. First edition. Hardcover. A PIVOTAL MOMENT IN AIRCRAFT DESIGN. First edition, extremely rare offprint, of this seminal work in the history of aviation, and a remarkable association copy linking three great early American pioneers of aviation and technology. In this work, Chanute presented his findings from nearly 2,000 flights made at Dune Park, Indiana, on the shores of Lake Michigan, in the summer of the previous year. These test-flights, led to his introduction of the Pratt-trussed biplane configuration, the essential shape of the early airplane, which was later adopted by the Wright brothers, and which he described in the present article. "It was a pivotal moment in the history of aircraft design, ranking with Henson and Stringfellow's postulation of the Aerial Steam Carriage over half a century earlier and Cayley's even more distant derivation of the modern airplane shape. It ushered in an era of strong, light, straightforward, uncomplicated (and… Read More

London: Abell Jeffes, 1591. First edition. the first serious ballistic studies in England" (DSB). Second and best edition of this important Elizabethan work on practical geometry, in which "for the first time, we have indications of an instrument which we may call a reflecting telescope" (King, The History of the Telescope, p. 29). This second edition contains several appendices by Thomas Digges, not present in the first edition, which constitute "the first serious ballistic studies in England" (DSB). The book also contains the first description and illustration of the theodolite. The first edition is an extremely rare book - no copy has sold at auction since the Kenney copy in 1966 (and that copy was defective). "This edition is essentially identical to the first with two significant additions by Thomas Digges: the 'Mathematicall discourse of the five Platonicall solid' and the first treatment of the science of ballistics in English. Also added to Book I is a short chapter (three leaves) on… Read More

[, 1931. First edition. 'the greatest blunder of my life'. An important group of photographs documenting Einstein's second visit to America, and his first to the California Institute of Technology, which began at the end of December 1930. The main purpose of the visit was to discuss Edwin Hubble's observations, made in 1929 with the 100-inch telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory (then the largest telescope in the world), which showed that light from distant nebulae (galaxies) was red-shifted, indicating that the universe was expanding. Einstein had believed that the universe is static, and had introduced his 'cosmological constant' into his equations of general relativity to allow for a static solution. When Einstein met Hubble at the Mount Wilson Observatory in January and February 1931, he was visibly moved with Hubble's discovery and reportedly said, with tears in his eyes that "It was the most beautiful and satisfying interpretation of astronomical science." In light of the new evidence,… Read More