Details
TORRICELLI, EVANGELISTA. Lezzione Accademiche. Florence: J. Guiducci and S. Franchi 1715. 4to, 272 x 190 mm. (10 7/8 x 7 1/2 in.), nineteenth-century half calf, spine tooled in gilt and blind, brown and red morocco lettering pieces, rubbed, slightly wormed at joints, edges uncut; folding cloth chemise and red morocco-backed slipcase; minor marginal tear to half-title, occasional very slight marginal finger-soiling. FIRST EDITION, half-title, engraved frontispiece portrait after Pietro Anichini, with imprimatur leaf c10 (usually bound at the end), 2 small text woodcuts (the first a schematic representation of a barometer), woodcut head- and tail-piece ornaments and initials. Dibner Heralds of Science 149; Sparrow, Milestones of Science 190; Norman 2088 (misdescribing the imprimatur leaf as an unsigned singleton 1).
A FINE COPY of Torricelli's twelve posthumously published lectures given to the Accademia della Crusca. Trained as a mathematician, the brilliant Torricelli (1608-1647) became Galileo's assistant and most distinguished pupil; of his numerous achievements in physics, mathematics and hydraulics he is best known for his discovery that liquids are pushed up in a tube by the pressure of the atmosphere on the surface of the liquid outside the tube, which led to his theoretical if not actual invention of the mercury barometer (Torricelli died before he could build the instrument himself). Collected by Tommaso Bonaventuri, the Lezzione relate mainly to physics and include discussions of impact, lightness, wind, and military architecture. "From the point of view of physics, the lectures on the force of impact and on wind are of particular interest. In the former he said that he was reporting ideas expressed by Galileo in their informal conversations, and there is no lack of original observations. For example, the assertion that 'forces and impetus' (what we call energy) lie in bodies was interpreted by Maxwell in the last paragraph of A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1873) as meaning that the propagation of energy is a mediate and not remote action" (DSB). Bonaventuri's preface includes reprints of Torricelli's two letters to Michelangelo Ricci (written in June 1644 but first published in 1664) describing his experiments with air pressure and expressing the desire to invent an instrument that would measure changes in atmospheric density.
Provenance: Biblioteca Rainer-Biscia, inkstamp on half-title -- Francesco Bracchini, bookplate -- Robert Honeyman IV, bookplate (sale, Sotheby's London, Part VII, 19-20 May 1981, lot 2993).
A FINE COPY of Torricelli's twelve posthumously published lectures given to the Accademia della Crusca. Trained as a mathematician, the brilliant Torricelli (1608-1647) became Galileo's assistant and most distinguished pupil; of his numerous achievements in physics, mathematics and hydraulics he is best known for his discovery that liquids are pushed up in a tube by the pressure of the atmosphere on the surface of the liquid outside the tube, which led to his theoretical if not actual invention of the mercury barometer (Torricelli died before he could build the instrument himself). Collected by Tommaso Bonaventuri, the Lezzione relate mainly to physics and include discussions of impact, lightness, wind, and military architecture. "From the point of view of physics, the lectures on the force of impact and on wind are of particular interest. In the former he said that he was reporting ideas expressed by Galileo in their informal conversations, and there is no lack of original observations. For example, the assertion that 'forces and impetus' (what we call energy) lie in bodies was interpreted by Maxwell in the last paragraph of A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1873) as meaning that the propagation of energy is a mediate and not remote action" (DSB). Bonaventuri's preface includes reprints of Torricelli's two letters to Michelangelo Ricci (written in June 1644 but first published in 1664) describing his experiments with air pressure and expressing the desire to invent an instrument that would measure changes in atmospheric density.
Provenance: Biblioteca Rainer-Biscia, inkstamp on half-title -- Francesco Bracchini, bookplate -- Robert Honeyman IV, bookplate (sale, Sotheby's London, Part VII, 19-20 May 1981, lot 2993).