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BOUGUER, Pierre. La figure de la terre, déterminée par les observations de Messieurs Bouguer, & de la Condamine... Paris: Charles-Antoine Jombert, 1749.
4o (245 x 185 mm). Errata leaf at end. 9 engraved folding plates, woodcut title-vignette by Papillon after Charles-Nicolas Cochin, engraved head-pieces, woodcut initials and tail-pieces (some occasional pale spotting). Later calf-backed marbled boards (joints cracked, some light wear at extremities). Provenance: R.S. Webb (signature on title-page, marginal notations throughout text).
FIRST EDITION of the most important work to issue from the Peruvian expedition of 1735-1744, undertaken by the Academy with the goal of measuring an arc of the meridian near the equator, resulting in the determination of the shape of the earth as an oblate spheroid. Bouguer quarrelled with his fellow scientists on the expedition, La Condamine and Godin, and thus published his own report separately. "Bouguer's work on the expedition... was of high quality. Apart from the main geodetic program, he did an astonishing amount of other scientific work, measuring the dilatation of various solids by making use of the large range of temperatures found in the Cordillera, investigating the phenomena of atmospheric refraction and the measurement of heights with the barometer, devising a new type of ship's log, and undertaking a number of other researches, despite the very difficult physical conditions under which the geodetic measurements had to be carried out" (DSB). Alden & Landis 749/35; Sabin 6876; Norman 285.
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FIRST EDITION of the most important work to issue from the Peruvian expedition of 1735-1744, undertaken by the Academy with the goal of measuring an arc of the meridian near the equator, resulting in the determination of the shape of the earth as an oblate spheroid. Bouguer quarrelled with his fellow scientists on the expedition, La Condamine and Godin, and thus published his own report separately. "Bouguer's work on the expedition... was of high quality. Apart from the main geodetic program, he did an astonishing amount of other scientific work, measuring the dilatation of various solids by making use of the large range of temperatures found in the Cordillera, investigating the phenomena of atmospheric refraction and the measurement of heights with the barometer, devising a new type of ship's log, and undertaking a number of other researches, despite the very difficult physical conditions under which the geodetic measurements had to be carried out" (DSB). Alden & Landis 749/35; Sabin 6876; Norman 285.