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GUERICKE, Otto von. Experimenta nova (ut vocantur) Magdeburgica de vacuo spatio, Amsterdam: Joannes Jansson à Waesberg, 1672. 2°, engraved title, 2 folding engraved plates and 20 illustrations, of which 7 are full-page, additional printed title with woodcut vignette, double columns (lacking portrait, occasional unobtrusive marginal waterstaining), early vellum-backed boards (extremities rubbed). FIRST EDITION. Dibner 55; Norman 952; Sparrow 90; Wheeler 170.
A good clean copy. "Guericke's invention of the air pump grew out of his interest in the nature of space, particularly in Descartes' belief in the equivalence of space and matter and denial of the possibility of vacuum. Guericke suspected otherwise, and, after several false starts, managed to construct a hollow apparatus from which he evacuated the air with a suction pump, thus disproving Descartes' claims and resolving the old controversy between vacuists and the plenists" (Norman). The most important result of Guericke's experiments was the discovery of the elasticity of air which led him to investigate the decrease of air density with height, and to relate variations in air pressure to changes in weather. The folding plate (see illustration) shows the famous Magdeburg experiment of 1657.
A good clean copy. "Guericke's invention of the air pump grew out of his interest in the nature of space, particularly in Descartes' belief in the equivalence of space and matter and denial of the possibility of vacuum. Guericke suspected otherwise, and, after several false starts, managed to construct a hollow apparatus from which he evacuated the air with a suction pump, thus disproving Descartes' claims and resolving the old controversy between vacuists and the plenists" (Norman). The most important result of Guericke's experiments was the discovery of the elasticity of air which led him to investigate the decrease of air density with height, and to relate variations in air pressure to changes in weather. The folding plate (see illustration) shows the famous Magdeburg experiment of 1657.