171
MAXWELL, James Clerk. A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1873. 2 volumes, 8o. Plates. Original cloth. FIRST EDITION. Provenance: William Durham (bookplates). -- Another edition. London: The Clarendon Press, 1881. 2 volumes, 8o. Plates. Original cloth. Second edition, . -- Matter and Motion. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1876. 12o. Original cloth. FIRST EDITION. -- Theory of Heat. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1871. 8o. Original cloth. FIRST EDITION. -- MAXWELL, ed. The Electrical Researches of the Honourable Henry Cavendish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1879. 8o. Original cloth. FIRST EDITION.
Details
MAXWELL, James Clerk. A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1873. 2 volumes, 8o. Plates. Original cloth. FIRST EDITION. Provenance: William Durham (bookplates). -- Another edition. London: The Clarendon Press, 1881. 2 volumes, 8o. Plates. Original cloth. Second edition, . -- Matter and Motion. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1876. 12o. Original cloth. FIRST EDITION. -- Theory of Heat. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1871. 8o. Original cloth. FIRST EDITION. -- MAXWELL, ed. The Electrical Researches of the Honourable Henry Cavendish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1879. 8o. Original cloth. FIRST EDITION.

Maxwell once remarked that the aim of his Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism was not to expound the final view of his electromagnetic theory, which he had developed in a series of five major papers between 1855 and 1868; rather, it was to educate himself by presenting a view of the stage he had reached in his thinking. Accordingly, the work is loosely organized on historical and experimental, rather than systematically deductive lines. It extended Maxwell's ideas beyond the scope of his earlier work in many directions, producing a highly fruitful (if somewhat confusing) demonstration of the special importance of electricity to physics as a whole. He began the investigation of moving frames of reference, which in Einstein's hands were to revolutionize physics; gave proofs of the existence of electromagnetic waves that paved the way for Hertz's discovery of radio waves; worked out connections between the electrical and optical qualities of bodies that would lead to modern solid-state physics; and applied Tait's quaternion formulae to the field equations, out of which Heaviside and Gibbs would develop vector analysis. Norman 1466. (7)
;

View All