Details
BARLOW, WILLIAM. The Navigators Supply. Conteining many things of principall importance belonging to Navigation, with the description and use of diverse Instruments framed chiefly for that purpose. London: Imprinted by G. Bishop, R. Newbery, and R. Barker 1597. Small 4to, disbound, title-page cut close at top and with some slight marginal tears, a few headlines cut into, some others just touched, blue half morocco slipcase. FIRST EDITION, engraved vignette of an instrument on title, 7 engraved plates (most folding, a few of instruments) by Charles Whitwell, woodcut initials and ornaments.
Barlow's rare first book, describing several new navigational instruments and compasses. To Barlow is owed the discovery of the difference between iron and steel for magnetic purposes. He is better known as the inventor of the repeating clock and repeating watch. STC 1445; Wheeler Gift 69. "William Barlow uses the 'nonnius' devised by Pedro Nuñez more than fifty years previously and gives a graphical method for drawing a Mercator network...He describes a number of new navigating and surveying instruments and summarizes his own contribution to the study of magnetism. Charles Whitwell engraved the plates and was ready to make the instruments described"--E.G.R. Taylor, The Mathematical Practitioners of Tudor & Stuart England (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 334-5.
Barlow's rare first book, describing several new navigational instruments and compasses. To Barlow is owed the discovery of the difference between iron and steel for magnetic purposes. He is better known as the inventor of the repeating clock and repeating watch. STC 1445; Wheeler Gift 69. "William Barlow uses the 'nonnius' devised by Pedro Nuñez more than fifty years previously and gives a graphical method for drawing a Mercator network...He describes a number of new navigating and surveying instruments and summarizes his own contribution to the study of magnetism. Charles Whitwell engraved the plates and was ready to make the instruments described"--E.G.R. Taylor, The Mathematical Practitioners of Tudor & Stuart England (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 334-5.