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17326441London: Various printers to the Royal Society 1732. 1665-1732. <p>First edition of the first 426 issues an unbroken run from March 1665 to December 1732 of the world's oldest continuous scientific journal and the single most important record of the first announcement and communication of scientific discoveries and inventions PMM. It contains groundbreaking research by Newton - all 17 of his optical papers and therefore his first printed contribution to science - and by Halley Hooke Boyle Flamsteed Leeuwenhoek Cassini Hevelius Huygens and many others across astronomy physics chemistry mathematics medicine and natural history. Through Newton's optical papers of 1672-1676 the Transactions saw the first experimentally grounded proposal for the radical reform of a scientific theory to be advanced through a technical journal - a proposal that became the first to arouse international discussion and debate in print and within the pattern of public announcement discussion and professional consensus then established science has advanced ever since. Provenance: armorial bookplate of Sir Marcus Beresford 1st Earl of Tyrone 1694-1763; contemporary inscription at the end of one issue January 1692/3 noting its donation by Robert Hooke; manuscript corrections and notes on more than eighty pages with eight further pages on the measurement of the Earth bound in at the end.</p>. The World's Oldest Continuous Scientific Journal. <p>First edition of the first 426 issues an unbroken run from March 1665 to December 1732 of the world's oldest continuous scientific journal and the single most important record of the first announcement and communication of scientific discoveries and inventions PMM. It contains groundbreaking research by Newton - all 17 of his optical papers and therefore his first printed contribution to science - and by Halley Hooke Boyle Flamsteed Leeuwenhoek Cassini Hevelius Huygens and many others in astronomy physics chemistry mathematics medicine and natural history. Thomas Henry Huxley observed in his 1866 address On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge that if every book in the world apart from the Philosophical Transactions were destroyed the foundations of physical science would remain secure and the intellectual progress of the last two centuries largely recoverable. Long unbroken runs of the first four-and-a-half decades are now of the greatest rarity. ABPC and RBH record only two comparable sets at auction in the last three decades - Norman 1694 Christie's New York 15 June 1998 lot 716 $112500 and Macclesfield 1782 Sotheby's 25 October 2005 lot 1782 £96000 = $171400 - and a set of just the seven volumes containing Newton's papers on light realised $75600 at Christie's in October 2022.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>Provenance: armorial bookplate of Sir Marcus Beresford 1st Earl of Tyrone 1694-1763 Anglo-Irish peer and politician on the front pastedowns; contemporary inscription at the end of one issue January 1692/3 noting its donation by Robert Hooke; numerous manuscript corrections on more than sixty pages additional notes on about twenty pages and eight pages of manuscript notes on the measurement of the Earth bound in at the end.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>In November 1660 members of the Oxford Philosophical Club - John Wilkins John Wallis Robert Boyle Christopher Wren Robert Hooke among them - met a group of London natural philosophers at Gresham College and agreed to form a philosophical society that would meet weekly to exchange information and to conduct experiments. The society received its charter from the newly restored Charles II in 1662 and Henry Oldenburg a German-English diplomat and friend of Boyle was installed as one of its two secretaries. One of the charter's terms called for the exchange of information with other learned societies and Oldenburg almost at once began a sustained correspondence - with the Cimento Academy in Florence the Montmor Academy in Paris and after its foundation in 1666 the Académie Royale des Sciences - and with hundreds of working natural philosophers in places that had no scientific society of their own. Oldenburg was fluent in German Dutch French English and Latin and he was able to translate most foreign correspondence himself including Antoni van Leeuwenhoek's letters on his microscopical investigations and the communications of Johannes Hevelius of Gdansk and Marcello Malpighi of Bologna. After some years writing letters without salary Oldenburg decided to compile a monthly newsletter summarising a month's Royal Society activities and send it out to his correspondents in a single printing. On 6 March 1665 Old Style; 16 March by the Gregorian calendar then in use on the continent the first issue of the Philosophical Transactions appeared. It consisted of letter-excerpts reviews and summaries of recently published books and accounts of observations and experiments from European natural philosophers. Some of the pieces Oldenburg wrote himself summarising the minutes of Society meetings; others he translated or adapted from printed sources; still others were composite pieces assembled from the letters of several correspondents on a common subject. After his death in 1677 the journal passed through the hands of a succession of editors frequently also Secretaries of the Society - Edmond Halley and Hans Sloane the best-known among them - and through a succession of printers its form and content broadly reflecting the priorities of the current editor and to a degree of the Society. The Royal Society assumed financial responsibility for the journal only in 1752.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>Until the last third of the seventeenth century most original contributions to science appeared in books in which an author's own findings were embedded within a systematic exposition of a larger subject. The chartering of the Royal Society in 1662 and of the Académie Royale des Sciences in 1666 and the launching in 1665 of the Journal des Sçavans at Paris and the Philosophical Transactions at London gave institutional expression to a new conception of science as a cooperative enterprise: the immediate objective of the individual scientist became the experimental contribution to an eventual system of nature rather than the construction of the system itself and the journal article began to replace the book as the unit in which that contribution was made. Newton was the first to advance through this new medium an experimentally grounded proposal for the radical reform of a scientific theory and his proposal was the first to arouse international debate within the columns of a scientific journal. Through that exchange - in which all the participants modified their positions - a consensus of scientific opinion was produced; and within the same pattern of public announcement discussion and professional consensus science has advanced ever since Kuhn in Cohen Isaac Newton's Papers and Letters on Natural Philosophy 2nd ed. 1978 pp. 27-29.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>Newton's seventeen optical papers comprising his entire published optical contribution to the journal across the 1670s run as a single intellectual sequence: the seminal 1672 New Theory paper No. 80 pp. 3075-3087 introducing the prism experiment and the spectral analysis of white light; the catadioptrical-telescope paper No. 81; a series of exchanges with the French Jesuit Pardies Nos. 82 84 85 with Christiaan Huygens via an 'ingenious person from Paris' Nos. 96 97 and with the Liège Jesuits Linus and Lucas Nos. 110 121 123 128 - together more than half of the seventeen papers all responding to objections raised against the New Theory. Newton's answer to Hooke's objections No. 88 is the most polemical of the set prefiguring the priority dispute that would dominate the Principia years; the answer to Sir Robert Moray on behalf of the Royal Society No. 83 the most measured. Across the seven volumes containing them the papers transformed optics from a body of empirical reports into a quantitative experimental science driven by decisive testing among hypotheses and supplied the methodological core that Newton would eventually assemble decades later into the Opticks of 1704.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>These papers together constitute the first major contribution to science made through a technical journal - the medium that rapidly became the standard mode of communication among scientists - and as Christianson puts it if Newton had published nothing else the optical papers alone would guarantee him a place among the immortals of modern science Christianson In the Presence of the Creator 1984 p. 150. They yield further an insight into Newton's mental processes that the Principia and the Opticks - formal impersonal Olympian - conceal; it is in these early brief sometimes hasty letters to Oldenburg as in his notebooks and unpublished manuscripts that the creative scientist is to be found Kuhn in Cohen pp. 27-29.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>When Newton was first appointed Lucasian Professor at Cambridge in 1669 he chose optics for the subject of his first lectures and researches and by the end of that year he had worked out in detail the decomposition of a beam of white light into rays of different colours by means of a prism the complete explanation of the rainbow following from this discovery. These results formed the subject of his Lucasian lectures in 1669 1670 and 1671 and their principal conclusions were communicated to the Royal Society in February 1672 and printed soon afterwards in the Transactions No. 80. Before Newton light had been believed to be a homogeneous substance and colour was held to be produced by the mixture of light with darkness - the prism in the standard account supplying the darkness that coloured the light with all rays of white light striking the prism at the same angle being equally refracted. Newton's experiments led him to the radically different conclusion that white light is a mixture of rays of many distinct types each refracted at a slightly different angle and each responsible for producing one spectral colour. He set up a prism near his window at Trinity College and projected the spectrum onto a wall twenty-two feet away; to prove that the prism refracted light rather than colouring it he refracted the beam a second time back to white. The crucial experiment that confirmed the theory was to isolate a narrow ray of a single colour from the first spectrum and pass it through a second prism where no further elongation or separation occurred - a demonstration that each spectral ray was itself unmixed and uniformly refrangible. The reception of the paper was mixed. Many contemporaries simply ignored it; Mariotte in 1679 Pardies 1672 and Linus 1675 all claimed to have failed to replicate the basic experiments described. Rather than argue with them in detail Newton invited his critics to repeat his experiments with greater care; they did so without success. Others - Hooke among them who confirmed the experiments himself before a committee of the Royal Society in April 1676 - conceded the results but held that they could be accommodated by minor modification of existing theories making Newton's radical interpretation unnecessary. The controversy lasted six years after the paper's first appearance and left Newton conspicuously wary of publication.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>Newton's invention of the reflecting telescope reported in the issue immediately following his first optical paper No. 81 had in fact prompted the optical work rather than the other way round: the chromatic aberration of refracting lenses - their inability to bring different colours of light to a single focal point - was the original stimulus for Newton's investigation of the nature of light. Newton had sent Oldenburg his letter describing the telescope before his letter describing the new theory and had hoped to present the telescope as a practical test-piece for the theory. Oldenburg however printed the material in the reverse order the theory first followed by the description of the instrument. The telescope made a considerable impression at the Royal Society which promptly elected Newton a Fellow; a corresponding notice appeared in the Journal des Sçavans in February 1672 with emphasis on the instrument's compactness and it was the telescope rather than the theory of light that first made Newton's name known on the Continent Dilaura Bibliotheca Opticoria 1475-1925 2019 pp. 235-236.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>Newton published three non-optical papers in his lifetime all anonymously. His only published paper on chemistry Scala Graduum Caloris No. 270 April 1701 pp. 824-829 states what has since become known as Newton's law of cooling - that the rate at which a hot body loses heat is proportional to the difference between its temperature and that of its surroundings - and describes the construction of a thermometer capable of measuring temperatures up to almost 1000 °C. An Account of the Book entituled Commercium Epistolicum Collinii & Aliorum De Analysi promota No. 342 February 1715 pp. 173-224 is Newton's anonymous review of the Commercium epistolicum the official report of the committee appointed by the Royal Society to adjudicate in the dispute between Newton and Leibniz over priority in the invention of calculus - the most bitter and consequential priority dispute in the history of science; the Account purports to be impartial but was in fact written like the Commercium epistolicum itself by Newton. In the same volume No. 347 March 1716 pp. 399-400 appeared Newton's Problematis Mathematicis Anglis Nuper Propositi Solutio Generalis his response to a challenge problem set by Johann Bernoulli to the English mathematicians; tradition has it that Newton solved it in a single evening after returning from a day's work at the Mint. With the exception of this minor paper none of Newton's original work on gravitation or on mathematics was published in the Transactions. Edmond Halley's review of the Principia however appeared soon after its publication No. 186 pp. 291-297 - Halley was then the journal's editor - and is prefaced by an advertisement apologising for the fact that the Transactions had been delayed for some months because Halley had had the entire care of the Principia's own edition and had therefore as he put it been more serviceable to the Commonwealth of Learning in seeing Newton's book into print than he would have been in issuing his own periodical on time. Halley pointed out with justice that one of the most striking features of the Principia was Newton's great skill in using the new mathematics - by which Halley meant Newton's own method of infinite series.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>Edmond Halley 1656-1742 was one of the most original minds of his time and he made a long series of important contributions of his own to the Transactions. The best-known of them is Astronomiae cometicae synopsis No. 297 March 1705 pp. 1882-1899 the first printing of the theory according to which comets belong to the solar system and move in eccentric elliptical orbits; it was here that Halley set out his method of computing the motion of comets of establishing their periodicity in elliptical orbits and of identifying the comet that would bear his name DSB. The confirmation of the comet's return - in 1759 after Halley's death - was the first time that a body other than a planet had been shown to orbit the Sun the earliest successful observational test of Newtonian physics and a vivid demonstration of its explanatory power; the comet was named after Halley by the French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in 1759. Halley's other major contributions to the journal include his Methodus singularis No. 348 June 1716 pp. 454-464 in which he challenged the international astronomical community to use the transits of Venus across the Sun predicted for 1761 and 1769 to transform astronomy into a fully empirical science by measuring the Earth-Sun distance - a challenge that astronomers took up organising expeditions to the farthest corners of the globe and overcoming obstacles of every kind; A short History of the several New-Stars No. 346 December 1715 pp. 354-356 in which he observed that the new stars of 1572 and 1604 Tycho's and Kepler's stars were not the only changing stars on record that others had been observed in 1596 1600 1670 and 1686 some of them fading and reappearing and one of them - Mira - appearing to wax and wane with a regular 330-day period; An Account of several Nebulae or lucid Spots like Clouds No. 347 March 1716 pp. 390-392 in which Halley assembled the first list of known nebulae with their discoverers crediting the Great Nebula in Orion to Huygens the Andromeda nebula to Boulliau and the two spherical nebulae in Centaurus and Hercules to himself; 'Of the infinity of the sphere of fix'd stars & Of the number order and light of the fix'd stars' No. 364 April 1720 pp. 22-26 in which Halley posed what later generations would call Olbers's paradox a century before Olbers did; and outside astronomy his paper on the Breslaw life table No. 196 January 1692/3 pp. 596-610 which produced the first life table based on sound demographic data and gave the first correct calculation of annuities using essentially the methods still in use today - a paper of first importance in the history of statistics.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>John Flamsteed 1646-1719 was with Halley the most important English astronomer of his generation; his major works are the Historiae coelestis first published in 1712 without his consent by Halley and Newton and the Atlas coelestis published posthumously in 1729 but he also contributed more than thirty articles to the Transactions chiefly on observational astronomy. No other Astronomer Royal before Airy displayed anything like Flamsteed's concern for the reduction and manipulation of his own data: far from bequeathing the mass of raw observations that Bradley would he reduced and applied them himself DSB.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>Robert Boyle 1627-1691 contributed some thirty-seven papers to the Transactions Fulton p. 138 among them his influential questionnaire General Heads for the Natural History of a Country a number of major experimental essays that sometimes filled a whole issue and most revealingly An Experimental Discourse of Quicksilver growing hot with Gold No. 122 February 1675/6 pp. 515-533 - a paper on a kind of mercury that would incalesce when amalgamated with gold suggesting that Boyle had achieved the long-sought alchemical philosophical mercury capable of transmuting base metals. Boyle's trials went back to 1652 when he had received the recipe from his American mentor George Starkey; his decision to go public in 1676 signalled a newly intense period of alchemical activity on his part. The paper drew from Newton - himself a committed alchemical enthusiast - a letter to Oldenburg urging that such matters were not to be communicated without immense damage to the world if there should be any truth in the Hermetic writers; Oldenburg took the hint and the incalescence paper remained a one-off in the Transactions Hunter Alchemy in the Transactions Royal Society blog 1 July 2015.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The Dutch microscopist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek 1632-1723 contributed 116 articles to the Transactions over the half-century 1673-1723; the most famous of them the letter on the protozoa No. 133 March 1677 pp. 821-831 gives the first detailed description of protists and bacteria in a range of environments. Leeuwenhoek is universally acknowledged as the father of microbiology: he discovered both protists and bacteria but more than being the first to see the microscopic world of his animalcules he was the first even to think of looking - certainly the first with the power to see. Using his own deceptively simple single-lensed microscopes he did not merely observe but conducted ingenious experiments exploring and manipulating his microscopic universe with a curiosity that belied his lack of any map or bearings. The verification of Leeuwenhoek's new world by the natural philosophers of the Royal Society set out the ground rules that still define experimental science today Lane The unseen world: reflections on Leeuwenhoek 1677 Philosophical Transactions B370 2015 pp. 1-10.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>Martin Lister 1639-1712 contributed in 1673 what is now regarded as the earliest journal article on palaeontology: A description of certain stones figured like plants No. 100 pp. 6181-6191 on the preservation of St Cuthbert's beads - crinoid remains - in the approximately 350-million-year-old Carboniferous limestones of northern England. The biological nature of fossils was then controversial: Kircher had argued that they formed by abiogenic plastic forces within the rock while Hooke and Steno had suggested they were the remains of living organisms. Lister was the first to explore how direct observation could decide between the two making observations about what modern geobiology calls taphonomy and biogenicity criteria - observations that presage current debates about the earliest signs of life on Earth and Mars Brasier Philosophical Transactions A373 2015 pp. 1-16. Other natural-historical papers scattered through the journal's first century - Account of a very odd monstrous calf Some experiments and observations on May-dew Some observations on strange swarms of insects - are in places fanciful but in many others acute; Hooke's own contributions which began in the very first issue March 1665 with A spot in one of the belts of Jupiter are sometimes held to include the first observation of the Great Red Spot still visible on Jupiter today.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The early volumes also contain the record of the world's first experiments with blood transfusion conducted in England in the mid-1660s. The procedure - gruesome - was first carried out between dogs with arteries and veins in the animals' necks opened and blood transferred from one to another through quills most likely of goose feather inserted into the vessels and clamped with running knots; in the physician Richard Lower's account No. 20 pp. 353-358 the transfusion came to an end when the emittent dog fell into convulsions and died. Shortly afterwards Boyle published a remarkable set of questions about the likely effects of transfusion on the animal receiving blood No. 22 pp. 385-388 asking whether transfusion might change a dog of one breed into another alter its temperament render a fierce dog cowardly transmit satiety or hunger obliterate learned behaviours or make a dog forget its master - a sequence of questions which as recent commentators have noted read like an alchemical programme turned inward upon the living body. Researchers soon proposed transfusion into a human subject. Since the procedure generally killed the emittent a human-to-human transfusion was thought impossible and a sheep was settled upon as donor. The choice of human recipient fell in 1667 upon Arthur Coga - mentally unstable but sufficiently educated to report in Latin on the effects of the procedure - and the operation was performed by Lower and the physician Edmund King No. 30 pp. 557-559 who judged that Coga had received nine or ten ounces of sheep's blood. A few days afterwards Coga reported back to the Society in Latin and Samuel Pepys meeting him at a dinner party shortly thereafter found him to speak very reasonably though cracked a little in his head.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>Other contributors in these decades include Cassini on the satellites of Jupiter Huygens on mechanics and optics Malpighi Swammerdam Borelli Steno Fahrenheit and Redi whose experimental refutation of spontaneous generation appeared in the journal alongside a steady stream of domestic material from Harvey Wren Ray Petty Locke Wallis Winthrop Tyson Lancisi Leibniz and Hales. To turn the pages of these thirty-seven volumes is to watch the first two generations of a new scientific public discover how to work together - how to record observation propose hypothesis invite replication agree or disagree in print and build by open argument the provisional consensus that is the hallmark of modern science.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>References: Grolier/Horblit 95b - Macclesfield 1782 - Norman 1694 - PMM 148 Vol. 1 - Brasier Deep questions about the nature of early-life signals: a commentary on Lister 1673 Philosophical Transactions A373 2015 pp. 1-16 - Christianson In the Presence of the Creator 1984. Cohen ed. Isaac Newton's Papers and Letters on Natural Philosophy 2nd ed. 1978 - Dilaura Bibliotheca Opticoria 1475-1925 2019 - Fulton A Bibliography of the Honourable Robert Boyle 1932 - Lane The unseen world: reflections on Leeuwenhoek 1677 Philosophical Transactions B370 2015 pp. 1-10.</p> <br /> <br/> <br/> 37 vols. bound in 22 4to 215 × 165 mm containing all issues from March 1665 No. 1 through December 1732 No. 426 with 380 engraved plates 306 folding 176 woodcut illustrations and diagrams and 7 folding tables occasional damp-staining a few tears and small holes occasionally affecting a word or two a few headlines shaved the plate in No. 56 map of part of Languedoc with a 7 cm tear that in No. 60 apparatus shaved at head and that in No. 196 with bottom corner repaired with loss of about a quarter of the plate relating to the dissection of a rat. Uniformly bound in eighteenth-century probably mid-1730s sprinkled calf spines ruled and tooled in gilt in compartments with title and volume-number labels some joints cracking but firm a few labels missing slightly rubbed. Generally very clean and well-preserved. Various printers to the Royal Society unknown
1704189050London: Printed for Sam Smith and Benj. Walford 1704. From the family library of a founding member of the Royal Society First edition first issue an exceptionally fresh and unrestored example. This copy comes from the family library of John Evelyn a fellow of the Royal Society alongside Newton for more than 30 years and the author of its first published book. As with many books from the Evelyn family library this copy bears an ink pressmark on the front pastedown in an early 18th-century hand. Evelyn was generally fastidious about annotating the books he acquired and this pressmark bears calligraphic similarities to one found in his copy of Taylor's Symbolon 1674 which he also annotated with his signature and motto. This copy remained in the Evelyn family library until the late 20th century: it entered the private market during the 1977-78 Christie's sales. Evelyn and Newton are among the most famous fellows of the early Royal Society. By 1704 the 84-year-old Evelyn had moved from Deptford to his ancestral home at Wotton in Surrey although his work as a treasurer for the new Greenwich Hospital brought him regularly back to London. A younger generation was now in charge of the Society's direction: in 1703 Newton assumed the presidency and gradually reshaped its work in line with Newtonian science. Evelyn continued to contribute to the Royal Society's intellectual life on his terms well into his 80s: in 1702 he published a paper in the Philosophical Transactions discussing his anatomical tables and he later attended two of the experimental sessions held under Newton's presidency. This first issue of the Opticks lacks Newton's name on the title page. Quarto 241 x 186 mm pp. iv 114 211 = 213 two blank pages left unnumbered. With 19 folding engraved plates tables and diagrams in text title page lettered in red and black. Contemporary panelled calf spine ruled in blind red morocco label to style edges sprinkled red. With custom cloth box. Late 18th-century engraved armorial bookplate of Frederick Evelyn 1734-1812 along with the Christie's sale bookplate. Light rubbing calf smooth and bright slight loss to head of spine and tiny wormhole to foot damp staining to upper margin of several leaves and plates a couple of tiny ink splashes contents otherwise generally crisp: a fresh copy. This copy: lot 1078 The Evelyn Library Part III: M-S Christie's March 1978 p. 62. Babson 132 1; Dibner Heralds of Science 148; ESTC T82019; Gray 174; Grolier/Horblit 79b; Norman 1588; Printing and the Mind of Man 172; Wallis 174. hardcover
17045582London: Sam. Smith and Benj. Walford Printers to the Royal Society 1704. Hardcover. Near Fine. 4to. 24.2 x 18.8 cm. 2 ff. 144 pp. 211 pp 1 pp. with 19 folding engraved plates. Bound in contemporary English paneled calf. Minor ribbing to binding. Only very minor marginal traces of use. Very genuine. Excellent. First edition first issue of this landmark in science by Sir Isaac Newton 1642-1727 here in a remarkably well preserved unrestored example. "The work summarized Newton's discoveries and theories concerning light and color: the spectrum of the sunlight the degrees of refraction associated with different colors the color circle the first in the history of color theory the invention of the reflecting telescope the first workable theory of the rainbow and experiments on what would later be called 'interference effects' in conjunction with Newton's rings . . . The first edition of the Opticks ends with two mathematical treatises in Latin written to establish his priority over Leibnitz in the invention of the calculus" Norman 1588. Babson 132; Dibner 148; Horblit 79b; PMM 172; Norman 1588; Wallis 174. <br/> <br/> Sam. Smith and Benj. Walford, Printers to the Royal Society hardcover books
17294526London: For Benjamin Mott 1729. first Edition in English. Two vols. 8vo. 19 x 11 cm. Paginated: 36 320; 2 393 13; viii 3 4-71 1 pp. Collation = Ad 1: pi1 A2 2A8 a8 B-X8. Ad 2: pi1 B-Z8 Aa-Cc8 Dd3 lacking blank leaf Dd4 as commonly; a4 A-D8 E4 with cancel C1 headling = "Gentium"; stain on fols. b7-8 and c1-2. Lacking engraved allegorical frontispiece to each volume not unusually. With 47 engraved folding plates numbered 1-25 and 1-19 with 3 unnumbered plates at rear of volume 2 2 folding letterpress tables 3 engraved headpieces. Bound in contemporary English sprinkled calf very minor wear wear along binding extremities spines with red morocco lettering pieces gilt black oval volume numbers gilt old shelf labels in MS on paper circles "30". BEAUTIFUL COPY OF THE FIRST ENGLISH-LANGUAGE EDITION OF THE GREATEST WORK IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE "PERHAPS THE GREATEST INTELLECTUAL STRIDE THAT IT HAS EVER BEEN GRANTED TO ANY MAN TO MAKE" EINSTEIN. <br /> <br /> "The Principia is generally described as the greatest work in the history of science. These provided the great synthesis of the cosmos proving finally its physical unity. Newton showed that the important and dramatic aspects of nature that were subject to the universal law of gravitation could be explained in mathematical terms within a single physical theory. With him the separation of natural and supernatural of sublunar and superlunar worlds disappeared" Bernard Cohen Introduction in The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy 1968.<br /> <br /> PMM: "Copernicus Galileo and Kepler had certainly shown the way; but where they described the phenomena they observed Newton explained the underlying laws." Originally published in Latin in 1687 the Principia "marked the culmination of the scientific revolution . ushered in modern science and through its legacy the work may have done more to shape the modern world than any other ever published" ODNB. Newton here laid the foundation for classical mechanics establishing the three laws of motion and universal gravitation. It is universally considered a masterpiece that unified physical laws of the heavens and earth. <br /> <br /> This finely printed translation into English by Mott made the work available to a wider lay audience. This edition also contains John Machin's attempt to rectify Newton's lunar theory "The Laws of the Moon's Motion according to Gravity." Most copies have an engraved frontispiece in each volume although some have only one Ransom Center etc. while a surprising number have neither of them as here including the Gonville and Caius copy at Cambridge University M.26.7-8. Because the book has been of enduring interest for almost 300 years with commensurately heavy use copies as fresh as this in contemporary bindings are of genuine rarity.<br /> <br /> Babson 20. Wallis 23. PMM 161. For Benjamin Mott unknown
17875001062HMS Sirius Portsmouth 1787. Slight tear on the edge of address panel where it was originally opened occasional wear and splitting at folds sealed tear. Quarto three pages and address leaf manuscript in ink on paper with original wax seal two filing holes in lower margin of each leaf; stamped "Gosport" small collector's stamp with manuscript cancellation. <p><p>A wonderful original letter by Newton Fowell the eighteen-year-old midshipman on HMS Sirius whose moving and evocative letters from the First Fleet have been one of the treasures of the State Library of New South Wales since they were acquired in 1987. This candid letter to his father John Fowell of Black Hall North Huish Devon is dated "Sirius 10 May 1787" and was written aboard the flagship of the First Fleet just three days before she set sail for Botany Bay.</p> <p>Newton Fowell was a well-connected "young gentleman" seaman whose family sought the sponsorship of Captain John Hunter and Evan Nepean to ensure his late inclusion in the First Fleet expedition. He joined the Sirius in February 1787 and was the last officer to do so apart from Arthur Phillip himself. In earlier letters to his father Fowell had expressed his impatience at the endless delays in departing. Yet in this letter when their final departure was imminent he was somewhat caught off guard: 'Capt Philip sic came on board yesterday and talks of sailing tomorrow how that will be I cannot say but the Wind at Present is fair'.</p> <p>Fowell describes the haste with which the men were called aboard: 'we had no great notice to get ready. I have some Linen on shore which if I cannot get to day will be left behind' and bemoans the tardiness of receiving their pay: 'We have not yet been paid any Advance it will be paid today and supposed only two Months the Men Murmur very much as most of them have 6 Months Pay due.'.</p> <p>By all accounts Fowell acquitted himself honourably during the nine-month voyage to Botany Bay and was the first officer to receive a promotion after their arrival: a fellow officer on Sirius described him as 'that very Deserving Young Man. Ordered to Act as Lieut. I have Every Reason to Suppose him for the first Promotion. I think him by far the Most Deserving Young Man in the Ship'.</p> <p>Fowell made three further voyages as lieutenant: the rapid circumnavigation with Hunter to the Cape of Good Hope and back on the Sirius and another to Norfolk Island on the Supply during which the Sirius was wrecked. His final voyage was to Batavia on a mission to purchase a replacement for the Sirius and obtain desperately-needed provisions. Having safely reached Batavia Fowell succumbed to the notorious Batavia fever and died aged twenty-two. On 14 March 1791 Phillip wrote to the Admiralty reporting on recent events 'The Supply lost five men in the voyage and left six in the Hospital in Batavia. Mr Newton Fowell who I had appointed second lieutenant of the Sirius when Lieutenant King was sent to Norfolk Island and the gunner of the Sirius likewise died on the Voyage. Both these officers were to have been landed at Norfolk Island had the Supply made it in her passage to Batavia'.</p> <p>The vast majority of First Fleet manuscripts are held institutionally; this example once in the Webster collection is a rare exception. The thirteen letters by Fowell held by the State Library of New South Wales and published in 1988 The Sirius Letters: The Complete Letters of Newton Fowell 1786-1790 give detailed reports of the voyage and the arrival of the Sirius in Port Jackson and difficulties of the first two years of settlement. They form a series which was earlier thought to be complete.</p> </p> . unknown
41117Entire letter 1 page quarto manuscript in ink on the first side of a bifolium laid paper watermarked with Britannia and GR surmounted by crown; dated 6 August 1787 and signed N. Fowell addressed to John Fowell Esq. Black Hall S. Brent Devonshire England with DOVER/SHIP-LRE hand-stamp on the face and rated in ms. 1/7 to be paid upon receipt; the flap with circular arrival date stamp NO/20/87; complete and well preserved some very light foxing and minor internal reinforcing at folds; the address and a few internal words slightly re-drawn small loss at one edge from where a little roughly opened red wax seal partially remnant. A First Fleet letter written at sea on the voyage to Botany Bay. The existence of this Newton Fowell letter was not known about at the time of publication of Nance Irvine's otherwise definitive census The Sirius letters : the complete letters of Newton Fowell midshipman and lieutenant aboard the Sirius flagship of the First Fleet on its voyage to New South Wales Sydney 1988. The letter only came to light in early 1991 when it was discovered in a bundle of maritime mail acquired from the book trade by its previous owner U.K. postal history collector Malcolm Mynott. It is unclear at what point it had become an estray separated from the rest of Fowell's correspondence which had been marked for preservation for posterity by his grief-stricken parents upon learning of his death at the end of 1790. The story of its identification its history and its significance are described in Mynott's scholarly article in Philately from Australia December 1992 - a copy of which we include with the letter. Virtually all of the other known Newton Fowell First Fleet correspondence was acquired by the State Library of New South Wales at auction in 1987 Sotheby's London 15 December 1987 lot 252. Midshipman Newton Fowell's missive to his father was written on 6 August 1787 the very day that the eleven ships of the First Fleet under Captain Arthur Phillip arrived at Rio de Janeiro. It is one of two surviving letters Fowell wrote to his family from Rio de Janeiro the other is dated 3 September. 'Honoured Father We are just now off Rio Janeiro on the Coast of Brazil South America from where a Packet is now under Weigh for Lisbon & have five Minutes time which I would not let slip to let you know I am very well & have great hopes of a Commission every Day. I am of course very happy and like the Officers very well. Capt. Philip has hoisted a broad Pendant pennant so I suppose he can here do anything with the Squadron he Pleases. I am in want of a few things which I did not find in the Chest the first some Coarse Cloth for Towels & some Table Cloths fit for a Wardroom Mess. Leather for shoes and Cloth for Trousers. 6th August. I am Hond. Father Your dutiful Son N. Fowell' I shall write again the first Opportunity.' The First Fleet would sail for Cape Town almost a month later on 4 September and thence to New South Wales. HMS Supply was the first ship to arrive at Botany Bay on 18 January 1788; three others arrived on the following day and the remaining ships of the squadron HMS Sirius among them dropped anchor on 20 January. Newton Fowell 1768-1790 was the second son of John Fowell and Mary née Digby of Black Hall manor near South Brent Devon. He joined the Royal Navy at the age of 12 in March 1781 as a midshipman on HMS Ocean. In 1786 the young man persuaded his father to use the influence he had through his connection with Lord Nepean to have him appointed to the First Fleet. He was duly transferred to HMS Sirius which would be the flagship of the First Fleet in February 1787. During the voyage to Australia Phillip reported favourably on Fowell in a letter to Nepean: '. a very good young man & improves very much.' Indeed at the landing ceremony at Sydney Cove Fowell would be a central participant alongside Phillip King Collins and Ball. Fowell was appointed acting second lieutenant in February 1788 when Philip Gidley King was sent to establish a settlement at Norfolk Island. His promotion was confirmed on 28 December 1789. In March 1790 when HMS Sirius under the command of John Hunter was wrecked at Norfolk Island Second Lieutenant Fowell and First Lieutenant William Bradley gallantly volunteered to stay on board the foundering vessel although the ship was ultimately lost. Fowell was then transferred to HMS Supply. Early in 1790 after being unable to make landfall at Norfolk Island the Supply continued on to Batavia where it was able to obtain fresh provisions for the fledgling penal settlement and a vessel to replace the Sirius the Waaksaamheyd. Fowell was chosen to sail the Waaksaamheyd back to Sydney an appointment which was to be his first - and last - command. In his final letter to his father written from Batavia at the end of July 1790 and carried back to England by Philip Gidley King on the Dutch packet Snelheid Fowell laments the loss of a number of precious curios and sketches in the wreck of the Sirius: 'I have sent a Plan of Botany Bay & Port Jackson / I had them all Complete to send you but they were lost in the Sirius with a very valuable collection of birds which cost me a great Deal of Trouble’. During his time at Sydney Cove Fowell is known to have made many sketches none of which have survived. On the return trip from Java Fowell died of fever at sea on 25 August 1790 at the age of just 22.  hardcover
1704157612London: Smith & Walford 1704. First. hardcover. very good. Also Two Treatises of the Species and Magnitude of Curvilinear Figures. 4 parts in 1 volume. Title page printed in red & black within a double-ruled border. Illustrated with 19 folding copperplate engravings.4 144 211 1pp. In the second sequence p. 120 is marked 112 and there are blank pages between 137-8 and 138-9. Thick 4to contemporary blind-tooled panelled calf expertly rebacked in matching leather contemporary signature on title dated 1704; last several pages have marginal dampstains otherwise a remarkably clean crisp copy. London: Smith & Walford 1704.<br/><br/> First edition first issue - with the author not named on title page. The work contains: The First Book of Opticks The Second Book of Opticks The Thrid Book of Opticks Tertii Ordinis: Enumeratio Linearum Tractatus de Quadratura Curvarum. The main work is in English the 2 treatises pages 138-211 are in Latin. Babson 132; Gray 174; Horblit 79b; PMM 172; Norman 1588; Dibner 148; Wallis 174.<br/><br/> Smith & Walford unknown books
1704157612London: Smith & Walford 1704. First. hardcover. very good. 4 parts in 1 volume. Title page printed in red & black within a double-ruled border. Illustrated with 19 folding copperplate engravings.4 144 211 1 pages. In the second sequence p. 120 is marked 112 and there are blank pages between 137-8 and 138-9. Thick 4to contemporary blind-tooled paneled calf well-worn and now expertly re-backed in sympathetic leather; last several pages have marginal dampstains otherwise a remarkably clean crisp copy. London: Smith & Walford Printers to the Royal Society 1704. First edition first issue - with the author not named on title page.<br/> <br/> "Newton's Opticks expounds his corpuscular theory of light and summarizes his experiments concerning light and colour. It also prints two important mathematical treatises omitted in later editions describing his invention of the fluxional calculus the grounds for his claim of priority over Leibniz. Newton arrived at most of his unconventional ideas on colour by about 1668 and Opticks was largely complete by 1692. However when he first partially expressed his theories in public in 1672 and 1675 they provoked hostile criticism especially on the continent. As a result Newton delayed the publication of Opticks until his most vociferous critics - especially Robert Hooke - were dead. Unusually for Newton and in what was probably a further defensive move the work was first published in English rather than Latin becoming a major contribution to the development of vernacular scientific literature. By about 1715 Opticks established itself as a model for interweaving theory with quantitative experimentation. Newton's aim was not to "explain the properties of light by hypotheses but to propose and prove them by reason and experiments" p. 1. The great achievement of the work was to show that colour was a mathematically definable property."<BR> <BR> The work contains: The First Book of Opticks The Second Book of Opticks The Thrid Book of Opticks Tertii Ordinis: Enumeratio Linearum Tractatus de Quadratura Curvarum. The main work is in English the 2 treatises pages 138-211 are in Latin. Babson 132; Gray 174; Horblit 79b; PMM 172; Norman 1588; Dibner 148; Wallis 174.Provenance: Signature of Francis Cremer the initial owner & contemporary of Newton's dated 1704 is on the title page with the price he paid of 12 shillings. Another ownership signature "Gul Bryant" also a sudent at Cambridge some decades later is on the rear flyleaf and the library label of Francis E. Nipher 1847- 1926 the American physicist on the front paste-down.<br/> <br/> Smith & Walford unknown
1698149618January 25 1698-1699. Rare vellum manuscript signed by Sir Isaac Newton as Warden of the Royal Mint in which he makes a case against his nemesis coin counterfeiter William Chaloner soon to be hanged for high treason. One page vellum manuscript document signed by Isaac Newton  “Is. Newton†January 25 1698-1699. Recognizance bond issued by Isaac Newton as Warden of the Royal Mint to ensure the future appearance of Nathaniel Peck as a witness against Newton’s nemesis the counterfeiter William Chaloner. The document reads in part "Nathanl Peck de Black Fryars London…Thos Worley de St Sepulchres London Glover…Symon Cross de east Aurifaber…Upon Condition the said Peck do personally appear at the next Genll Sessions of the peace …in St John str for the County aforesaid Then and there to answer…objected agt him touching his packing away Counterfeit money for advantage." Appointed as Warden of the Mint in 1696 upon the recommendation of Charles Montagu Chancellor of the Exchequer Isaac Newton ascended to the role of Master of the Mint the following year—a position he would retain for the remainder of his life. Prioritizing his duties at the Mint over his academic commitments he relinquished his responsibilities at Cambridge in 1701 to devote himself fully to the office. As Master Newton spearheaded significant currency reforms and pursued counterfeiters with unwavering diligence wielding the full force of the law as exemplified by the fate of William Chaloner. On the very day Newton signed this bond he received a formal statement from Nathaniel Peck who attested that seven years prior Chaloner had commissioned him to modify two iron pieces which were subsequently used to produce counterfeit French pistoles. Additionally Peck admitted to purchasing counterfeit pistoles from Chaloner at a rate of eight shillings per coin and reselling them for eleven shillings. Some months later Chaloner provided Peck with forged guineas which he likewise circulated before Chaloner turned to Thomas Holloway as his preferred distributor. By early 1699 Newton had compiled a formidable body of evidence against Chaloner consisting of 44 depositions. Chaloner had been apprehended in November 1698 on charges of forging lottery tickets though those specific allegations were ultimately dismissed. Nevertheless Newton proceeded to indict him on three separate counts securing a conviction for high treason on March 3 1699. Mere weeks later on March 22 Chaloner met his end at the gallows of Tyburn. In good condition fold at center scattered toning. Archivally mounted matted and framed with a portrait of Newton. The document measures 12.25 inches by 3 inches. The entire piece measures 23.5 inches by 23 inches. Signed documents by Newton are exceptionally rare. Isaac Newton 1643–1727 was an English mathematician physicist and astronomer widely regarded as one of the most influential scientists in history. His groundbreaking work Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica 1687 laid the foundation for classical mechanics introducing the laws of motion and universal gravitation. However beyond his scientific achievements Newton played a crucial role in England’s financial and legal system. In 1696 he was appointed Warden of the Royal Mint largely due to the recommendation of Charles Montagu Chancellor of the Exchequer. A few years later in 1699 he became Master of the Mint a position he held until his death. Newton took his role seriously overseeing the recoinage of England’s currency implementing measures to stabilize the economy and aggressively pursuing counterfeiters. His meticulous investigations led to the conviction of notorious forgers like William Chaloner demonstrating his unwavering commitment to upholding the integrity of England’s monetary system. hardcover
1704140946960London: Printed for Sam. Smith and Benj. Walford Printers to the Royal Society at the Prince's Arms in St. Paul's Church-Yard 1704. First Edition. Very Good. First edition first issue of this foundational work in the field of optics in which Isaac Newton explores the nature of light and color presenting his experiments and theories on how light behaves. Title printed in red and black within a double-rule border and without author's name. Bound in contemporary paneled calf boards sympathetically rebacked; with 19 engraved folding plates. <p>Very Good. Soiling to textblock and endsheets bookplate of Irish naturalist John Vandeleur Stewart affixed to the front pastedown ownership signature to title page. Amateur repair to gutter at title page. Numerous pencil notations throughout though mostly confined to the margins or blank areas. Plate 5 is torn at the fold plate 6 with corner loss affecting the image several shaved. Second book with page 120 misnumbered as 112. <p>A lovely copy of Newton's second major book on physical science considered one of the Scientific Revolution's three major works on optics. It overturned centuries of thinking attributed to Aristotle or Theophrastus and accepted by scholars in Newton's time that "pure" light such as the light attributed to the Sun is fundamentally white or colorless and is altered into color by mixture with darkness caused by interactions with matter. Here Newton shows the opposite was true: light is composed of different spectral hues he describes seven – red orange yellow green blue indigo and violet and all colors including white are formed by various mixtures of these hues. He demonstrates that color arises from a physical property of light – each hue is refracted at a characteristic angle by a prism or lens – but he clearly states that color is a sensation within the mind and not an inherent property of material objects or of light itself. <p>Unlike his earlier work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica which took a more deductive approach Opticks is largely experimental and inductive. Newton's study includes detailed descriptions of his experiments with prisms and lenses leading to the conclusion that white light is composed of a spectrum of colors. The work also delves into the phenomena of diffraction and interference which were crucial to the development of wave theory in later years. The work is notable for containing Newton's first mathematical papers in print and for giving the first full explanation of the rainbow complete with related diagrams. Like Galileo Newton decided to publish this text in his native English rather than Latin the language of scholarship; an enlarged Latin edition would be published two years later. Printed for Sam. Smith and Benj. Walford, Printers to the Royal Society, at the Prince's Arms in St. Paul's Church-Yard unknown
1713181514Cambridge: Printed by Cornelius Crownfield at the University Press 1713. I feign no hypotheses Second edition extensively revised by Newton himself and including the first appearance of the General Scholium: among his last discussions of scientific enquiry and the source of his famed principle "Hypotheses non fingo" "I feign no hypotheses" - p. 484. "The Principia that has shaped Western scientific tracition is substantially the second edition" ODNB. Together with Roger Cotes 1682-1716 Cambridge's Plumian Professor of Astronomy Newton extensively overhauled the Principia over a period of four years: almost 400 of the first edition's 494 pages have been revised here. Alongside the Scholium the pair made particularly extensive annotations to the sections on lunar theory comets and fluid dynamics. Cotes was a gifted mathematician in his own right: after his early death Newton commented that "if he had lived we might have learned something". Cotes's lengthy preface together with Newton's Scholium and the revisions to the text itself helped to fashion the second edition of the Principia into a key text in the lengthy debate between Newton and continental philosophy most particularly that of Leibniz. The "Hypotheses non fingo" principle is directly framed to emphasize Newton's focus on descriptive analysis in contrast to continental speculation over causes. This is one of 750 copies printed at the Cambridge university press under the supervision of Richard Bentley the famed and feared master of Trinity College. Quarto 233 x 191 mm pp. xxviii 484 8. Leaf 3Q2 cancelled. Folding engraved plate facing p. 465 engraved Cambridge University Press printer's device on title page extensive wood-engraved diagrams in text. Recent vellum spine with red morocco label covers with yapp edges edges sprinkled red. With 20th-century engraved bookplate of the noted science collectors Peter and Margarethe Braune. Light finger soiling infrequent minor browning and foxing running wormhole throughout with discreet infill to most leaves and marginal repair to title and leaf b1 contents otherwise crisp and clean: a very good copy indeed. Babson 12; Dibner 11 note; ESTC T93210; Gray 8; Wallis 8. hardcover
1719146958November 11 1719. Rare and unrecorded 18th century legal document signed twice at the conclusion by Sir Isaac Newton as a witness to a land indenture. Manuscript document signed twice on the verso "Isaac Newton" one vellum membrane dated 11 November 1719 signed by Thomas Sturgess and with his seal witnessed twice on the dorse the sealing of the document and the payment of the PS270 witnessed separately by Newton and also by Richard Cox and James Weston and also signed again by Sturgess. The document records an indenture by which Thomas Sturgess of the parish of St Martin's in the Fields sells to Robert Newton of Colsterworth Lincs for the sum of PS270 a messuage or tenement in Colsterworth in the tenure of William Bulliner and also around 70 acres of arable land and pasture in Colsterworth and Woolsthorpe "Woollstrop" also occupied by the Bulliner family William Joan and son John also one rood i.e. quarter acre of land previously belonging to John Storey of Kneeton Notts and other lands. Newton was in his mid-70s when he witnessed this deed and was living in London as Master of the Mint. He almost certainly knew both parties to this transaction. His home in St Martin's Street was in the parish of St Martin's in the Fields which was also the home of Thomas Sturgess who was selling the land in this transaction. The buyer was his first cousin once removed Robert Newton of Colsterworth d.1734. Isaac Newton would also have been familiar with the fields and houses that his cousin was buying: the property in question included land in Newton's native hamlet of Woolsthorpe as well as in the adjacent village of Colsterworth. In near fine condition. The piece measures 20 inches by 23. Documents signed by Sir Isaac Newton are rare and most relate to his work as Master of the Mint. A document closely related to this one was however sold at auction in 2015. Dated one day before the current document that deed recorded the sale of land by Sturgess to Robert Newton for the nominal sum of 5 shillings. It was similarly signed only once by Isaac Newton as a witness. English mathematician astronomer theologian author and physicist Sir Isaac Newton is widely considered one of the most influential scientists of all time and a key figure in the scientific revolution. In one of his most important works Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that formed the dominant scientific viewpoint until being superseded by the theory of relativity. Considered one of the greatest works of science ever published Newton’s second major book Opticks analyzes the fundamental nature of light by means of the refraction of light with prisms and lenses the diffraction of light by closely spaced sheets of glass and the behavior of color mixtures with spectral lights or pigment powders. hardcover
17286610London: J. Tonson J. Osborn & T. Longman 1728. First edition. <p>First edition an extraordinary Newtonian association copy of Newton's rarest book inscribed by James Stirling recording the gift from Abraham de Moivre "Ja: Stirling Ex Dono Dni De Moivre". Drafted in the mid-1680s as the liber secundus of the earliest Principia the text differs substantially from the published Book III. Among its non-Principia contents are the thought-experiment of the orbiting cannonball anticipating the artificial satellite the first acceptable photometric determination of a stellar distance and passages that point to terrestrial tides Michelson 1919 and to the existence of the planet Uranus Herschel 1781. OCLC lists six copies worldwide; no copy in Cambridge.</p>. An Exceptional Newtonian Association Copy. <p>First edition of Newton's rarest book - the discarded first draft of what would become Book III of Principia posthumously published in the year following his death - and an extraordinary association copy in contemporary panelled calf inscribed on the front pastedown by James Stirling: "Ja: Stirling Ex Dono Dni De Moivre". The inscription records the gift in the year of publication from Abraham de Moivre to Stirling his junior by twenty-five years. The two men were the foremost mathematicians at work in London at Newton's death and the leading contemporary proponents of Newtonian mathematics; both had been part of Newton's personal circle for decades both were Fellows of the Royal Society in his lifetime and within two years of the present gift their joint correspondence on the asymptotic behaviour of the binomial coefficient would yield what is now known as Stirling's formula. Of de Moivre the ODNB remarks that he was the man "whose early investigations led Stirling into this topic". The book passed with the rest of Stirling's mathematical library into the family seat at Garden House in Stirlingshire where it remained for nearly three centuries until the dispersal at Lyon & Turnbull Edinburgh on 23 October 2025. No comparable association copy of the Latin first edition is recorded in the modern trade.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The text Conduitt brought through the press in 1728 had been written in 1685 in the same Cambridge year as the first two books of Principia and was originally intended to constitute the second of two books under the title De motu corporum liber secundus. By the summer of 1685 Newton had expanded the design of Principia to three books with the original second book becoming the third; at the same moment he reconsidered the character of the new Book III. He had at first envisaged a popular treatment that as he noted in the introduction to the published Book III 'might be read by many'; but fearing the controversies such a work would invite he replaced the popular draft with a strictly mathematical exposition that could be read only by those who had mastered the first two books Gjertsen p. 573. Having no immediate use for the rejected version Newton had Humphrey Newton no relation his Cambridge amanuensis make a fair copy of part of the manuscript and on 29 September 1687 deposited it in the Cambridge University Library in the supposed fulfilment of his obligations as Lucasian Professor: that deposit mostly in Humphrey's hand is now ULC MS Add. 3990. A further copy by Roger Cotes is preserved at Trinity College Cambridge and a third copy is held at Clare College; Ernst Weil offered a fourth in his Catalogue 27 no. 152. Newton's distaste for controversy precluded the printing of any of these copies in his lifetime.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The 1728 publication was arranged by John Conduitt the husband of Newton's half-niece Catherine Barton and his successor as Master of the Mint who had taken charge of Newton's manuscripts after his death in March 1727. Conduitt sold the deposit copy to the bookseller Jacob Tonson for thirty-one pounds and ten shillings and Tonson published in partnership with John Osborn and Thomas Longman. It was almost certainly Conduitt who substituted the title De mundi systemate for Newton's own De motu corporum liber secundus - a definite improvement corresponding much more closely to the content but one that has caused enduring confusion with the title of the published Book III of Principia from which the present text differs sharply in style and method.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>What is published here differs from the printed Book III of 1687 not only in style but in substance. The first part offers a non-mathematical account of centripetal force; the next turns to the dynamics of the solar system; two long discussions then follow on the theory of tides and the nature and dynamics of comets the work closing with the inverse problem of recovering a comet's orbit from its observed velocity and distance from the Sun. Several discoveries and observations preserved in the rejected text never reached the printed Principia at all. Pages 3-4 contain Newton's thought-experiment of the orbiting cannonball with an accompanying diagram here Tab. I Fig. 1 showing that there is no kind-difference between projectile and orbital motion: a ball fired from the top of a mountain with progressively greater velocity falls further and further from the base of the mountain until at length it never reaches the ground at all and enters into orbit. Ernst Weil regarded this as "the anticipation of an artificial satellite 270 years before its advent". The discussion and diagram do not appear in the 1687 Principia in any form.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>More substantial still is the discussion of stellar distances on which the printed Principia is virtually silent. Newton had investigated the question in 1685 by a method devised by James Gregory in 1668: comparing the brightness of the Sun by way of its reflection from Saturn with that of a fixed star and then applying the inverse-square law of photometry. With assumptions about the nature of reflection the absence of light-loss in interstellar space and the equality of intrinsic brightness between the Sun and the comparison star Newton found Sirius to lie at a distance of about a million astronomical units. The figure is too great by an order of magnitude but as J. D. North has argued this can be counted as "the first acceptable determination of a star's distance" Cosmos p. 418. Newton's motivation was theological as much as astronomical: he had been perplexed by the question why the cosmos did not collapse upon itself under the action of universal gravitation and the immense interstellar distances supplied a workable answer.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The text further records in advance of their observational confirmation two phenomena that would not be detected for another two centuries. Newton points to the possibility of terrestrial tidal effects; these were observed by Albert A. Michelson and Henry G. Gale at Yerkes Observatory in 1919 by the application of monochromatic interference fringes to a determination of the rigidity of the Earth and reported in Science 50 pp. 327-8. In another passage first identified by J. Ph. Wolfers in his German Principia of 1872 Newton indicates the possible existence of a planet beyond Saturn ultimately observed by Herschel in 1781 and named Uranus - ironically Herschel himself on first observation took it to be a comet the very class of body that Newton throughout the present work regards as continuous with the planets and as moving on closely related orbits.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The publication history of 1728 is further complicated by the simultaneous appearance of an anonymous English translation A Treatise of the System of the World sometimes attributed to Andrew Motte the translator of Principia in 1729; its translator has never been certainly identified. The Latin and English texts diverge in important respects and it is unclear whether the Treatise is a translation of a different and now-lost manuscript or whether the differences reflect interpolations by the translator. The Latin version is unambiguously based on the manuscript in Humphrey's hand: the compositor uses a half-square bracket in the margins to mark the end of one page and the beginning of another in the manuscript and to flag in some places the start of a manuscript signature Cohen p. xii. The translator additionally suppressed Newton's many citations to specific propositions in the original-draft Principia sometimes adversely affecting the readability of the result; in the Latin the citations have been preserved but updated to correspond to the proposition numbering of the third edition of Principia London 1726 which makes the present Latin text the more informative scientifically and historically. The citations were restored only in the second English edition of 1731 an edition that I. B. Cohen accordingly considered "of far more value . than the first" English version Cohen p. xiii. The Treatise is much more frequently encountered in commerce: OCLC lists more than fifty copies of the English first edition and twenty-five or more have appeared at auction. The Latin first edition presents a quite different picture.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The Latin De mundi systemate is exceptionally rare. OCLC lists only six copies worldwide three of them in North America Chicago the Huntington Library - the Babson copy - and Yale and no copy is recorded in either the Cambridge College libraries or the Cambridge University Library despite Newton's manuscript residing on the same site. The Cambridge Digital Library editorial note to MS Add. 3990 states in a small error perhaps connected to the Cambridge gap that the work was first published in 1731 - the year of the second edition. Auction appearances over the last fifty years have been restricted to two recorded copies: the Honeyman copy rebacked and damp-stained and the Macclesfield copy from the Earls of Macclesfield's celebrated mathematical library at Shirburn Castle. The present copy is the third copy to come to public sale in that period and is the first to be offered with a contemporary presentation inscription linking it directly to two of Newton's closest mathematical contemporaries. The Latin text was reprinted in London in 1731 and again in Amsterdam in 1742; it was incorporated into Johannes Castillioneus's Isaaci Newtoni Opuscula at Lausanne in 1744 and into Samuel Horsley's five-volume Isaaci Newtoni Opera at London in 1779-85; none of these later printings carries the textual authority of the 1728 first edition prepared in the immediate aftermath of Newton's death from the manuscript his executors retained.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>James Stirling 1692-1770 to whom the present copy was given was born at Garden House in Stirlingshire on 11 May 1692 the third son of Archibald Stirling and Anna Hamilton into a Scottish family with deep Jacobite sympathies. He matriculated at Balliol College Oxford on 18 January 1711 as a Snell Exhibitioner from the University of Glasgow and held a Bishop Warner Exhibition from October of the same year. His Jacobite associations cost him both scholarships and his place at Oxford in 1715 when he refused to swear the oaths of allegiance and abjuration following the rising of 1715. Stirling travelled to the Continent - reaching Venice by 1717 - where he supported himself by teaching mathematics and where in the same year he published his first major work Lineae Tertii Ordinis Neutonianae a treatise on the cubic curves that completed and extended Newton's classification appended to Opticks in 1704. The book was dedicated to Newton with whom Stirling had begun corresponding from Venice through Newton's Royal Society colleagues and it secured Stirling's standing in the British mathematical community despite his political exile.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>By 1725 Stirling had returned to London with Newton's personal assistance and was appointed to the staff of William Watts's Academy in Little Tower Street off Covent Garden - one of the leading commercial training schools of the city where Stirling's 1727 syllabus advertised lectures on mechanical and experimental philosophy spanning mechanics hydrostatics optics and astronomy. Newton proposed Stirling for fellowship of the Royal Society; he was elected on 3 November 1726 four months before Newton's death. Throughout his London decade Stirling was a frequent visitor to the aged Newton at his country house at Kensington: "Sr Isaac Newton lives a little way off in the country" he wrote to Maclaurin in 1725 finding Newton kind and serviceable but much enfeebled. The fruit of these London years was Stirling's second and most famous work Methodus Differentialis London 1730 the early classic of numerical analysis containing what are now known as Stirling numbers Stirling's interpolation formula and the asymptotic formula for the logarithm of the factorial that bears his name.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>Abraham de Moivre 1667-1754 the donor had reached England as a Huguenot refugee in 1685 following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and supported himself in London by tutoring the sons of the gentry and by giving mathematical lessons in the coffee-houses of St Martin's Lane. He had become a friend of Newton by about 1692 and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1697. He saw Samuel Clarke's Latin Optice through the press in 1706 the year following Opticks in English; in 1712 he served on the Royal Society's commission alongside Halley Arbuthnot Jones Machin and others that arbitrated the priority dispute between Newton and Leibniz over the calculus and adjudicated in Newton's favour. De Moivre's own publications - De Mensura Sortis 1711; The Doctrine of Chances in three editions 1718 1738 1756; Miscellanea Analytica 1730; the formula linking complex exponentials to trigonometry and the early statement of the central limit theorem - placed him among the foremost probabilists of his century. The story preserved by his Royal Society colleagues that the aged Newton would direct mathematical questioners to him with the words "he knows all these things better than I do" was already current in his lifetime.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The friendship between Stirling and de Moivre was the closest mathematical relationship of the older man's last decades and the most consequential of Stirling's. Stirling's letter to de Moivre of 19 June 1729 preserved in the Royal Society archives and reproduced in Ian Tweddle's annotated translation of Methodus Differentialis Springer 2003 illustrates how Stirling had calculated the coefficient of the middle term of the binomial expansion a bn for large n by means of a logarithmic series; de Moivre who had pursued the same problem for some years was able to extend his earlier results using Stirling's ideas and shortly afterwards published a Supplement to his Miscellanea Analytica. By September 1730 Stirling was relating the new exchange to Gabriel Cramer at Geneva. The joint provenance of the asymptotic formula for n! named after Stirling but resting on de Moivre's earlier "Approximatio ad summam terminorum binomii" has its origin in this exchange. The Methodus Differentialis of 1730 which states the formula in 'Example 2 to Proposition 28' was published two years after the present gift; the book Stirling received from de Moivre in 1728 carried the work of their common master the rejected first draft of Principia into the next mathematical generation.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The dating of the inscription is precise. The Latin De mundi systemate published in London in the second half of 1728 would have come into the hands of the leading London mathematicians within weeks of issue; de Moivre's presentation to Stirling recorded in Stirling's own hand on the front pastedown can therefore be placed in the closing months of 1728 or in early 1729 in the year following Newton's death and within two years of Stirling's election to the Royal Society. The form of the inscription is the recipient's record of the gift not the donor's presentation: it is unsigned by de Moivre and the courtesy form "Dni De Moivre" Domini De Moivre is the standard early-eighteenth-century Latin used between Fellows. The hand is the same as that of Stirling's 1729 letter to de Moivre and of his autograph manuscript of Methodus Differentialis both preserved at Garden House until the same dispersal of October 2025.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The book is in entirely original condition in the contemporary panelled calf binding it received in London in 1728: the covers framed by double gilt fillets enclosing a recessed central panel the spine in compartments separated by raised bands the red morocco lettering-piece preserving the gilt label 'DE MUNDI SYSTE MAT' with characteristic compartment dotted ornament and the edges sprinkled red. It travelled with Stirling from London to Garden House in or about 1735 when he relinquished his London teaching to take up the management of the Scots Mining Company at Leadhills in Lanarkshire an appointment he held until his retirement; the books and instruments he had assembled in his London years went with him were preserved by his collateral heirs Stirling died unmarried in Edinburgh on 5 December 1770 and remained at Garden House through nine generations of the Stirling family until the dispersal at Lyon & Turnbull on 23 October 2025. In the same sale Stirling's autograph Methodus Differentialis manuscript brought £50400 his own annotated copy of Principia £42840 and the Edinburgh silver pocket microscope by John Clark used in his Leadhills assays a further £42840: the present De mundi systemate stands within the same archive of working tools by which one of Newton's leading disciples carried his mathematics into the next century.</p> <br /> <br /> References: Babson 16 - Wallis 19 - Norman 1593 English translation only - Gray 19 1731 reprint only - Cohen I. B. introduction to A Treatise of the System of the World London & Berkeley 1969 - Gjertsen D. The Newton Handbook London 1986 p. 573 - North J. D. Cosmos: An Illustrated History of Astronomy and Cosmology Chicago 2008 p. 418 - Tweddle I. James Stirling's Methodus Differentialis: An Annotated Translation of Stirling's Text London 2003 - Hoskin M. A. 'Newton Providence and the Universe of Stars' Journal for the History of Astronomy 8 1977 pp. 77-101 - Walker H. M. Studies in the History of Statistical Method Baltimore 1929 - The Library of James Stirling Mathematician Lyon & Turnbull Edinburgh 23 October 2025 lot 9.<br /> <br/> <br/> <br /> <p>4to 231 × 177 mm pp. iv 108 with two folding engraved plates of geometrical diagrams Tab. I and Tab. II title printed in red and black with engraved typographic ornament. Contemporary panelled calf covers framed by double gilt fillets enclosing a recessed central panel spine in six compartments with five raised bands red morocco lettering-piece preserving gilt 'DE MUNDI SYSTE MAT' edges sprinkled red. Covers rubbed with surface wear to the recessed central panels spine and joints sound lettering-piece intact.</p> . J. Tonson, J. Osborn & T. Longman unknown
17136668Cantabrigiae Cambridge: Cornelius Crownfield at the University Press 1713. Second edition. <p>Second edition and the first to contain the General Scholium - the four pages in which Hypotheses non fingo appears in print for the first time and in which Newton having spent the entire book establishing gravity as a mathematical law without a known cause gestures in his closing paragraph toward a spiritus subtilissimus diffused through all bodies and responsible at once for cohesion light sensation and electricity. Twenty-six years separate this from the 1687 first edition. What Roger Cotes extracted from Newton in three and a half years of editorial labour is not a corrected reprint but a substantively different book: of the original 494 pages 397 were altered; Book II was essentially rewritten; the lunar and cometary theories were enlarged; and Cotes's own preface was added - the first sustained public defence of Newtonian induction against Cartesian vortex physics. Printed in 750 copies and distributed by Newton's own hand to the academies and courts of Europe the 1713 is the edition through which Newtonianism conquered the Continent - the Principia Voltaire used and Émilie du Châtelet's base text for the only French translation Newton has ever had.</p>. The First Appearance of the General Scholium and of Hypotheses non fingo. <p>Second edition and the first to contain the General Scholium - Newton's most famous and most quoted single passage in which the phrase Hypotheses non fingo appears in print for the first time. Twenty-six years separate this edition from the 1687 first and Newton spent most of those years claiming to have lost interest in natural philosophy while in fact reworking the Principia in private. What the Cambridge mathematician Roger Cotes and the formidable Master of Trinity Richard Bentley between them extracted from him in the years 1709 to 1713 is not a corrected reprint of the 1687 Principia but a substantively different book - the version of the Principia through which the eighteenth century actually came to know Newtonian physics. The first edition had been a hurried mathematical performance for a tiny audience printed in perhaps 250 copies and effectively unobtainable on the Continent within a few years. The second edition printed in 750 copies at the recently revived Cambridge University Press and distributed by Newton's own hand to a list of European academies princes and savants - including a personal presentation to Queen Anne on 27 July 1713 and copies sent to Cassini de la Hire Varignon the Bernoullis Leibniz and Yale - is the Principia through which Newtonianism established itself as the dominant scientific worldview of the European Enlightenment.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The story of how the edition came into being is essentially the story of Cotes's labour. Bentley who had recently revived Cambridge University Press and was looking for a flagship publication to establish its prestige persuaded Newton in 1709 to allow a new edition and proposed Cotes - at twenty-seven the recently appointed first Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Trinity - as supervisor of the work. Newton at first treated the revision casually but Cotes took it seriously and in the course of three and a half years of close collaboration coaxed Newton into a similar enthusiasm. The surviving Newton-Cotes correspondence edited by Edleston in 1850 and one of the most revealing documents we have of Newton at work shows Cotes querying every page proposing alterations and gradually pulling Newton back into active engagement with mathematical and astronomical problems he had not seriously thought about in fifteen years. By the time the printing was finished in the spring of 1713 the 494 pages of the 1687 had become a book of which as Rouse Ball calculated 397 are more or less modified in the second edition. The major reworked sections were the propositions on the resistance of fluids in Book II - sections 6 and 7 propositions 34 to 40 where Newton had been embarrassed by errors since the 1690s and which are now essentially rewritten; the lunar theory in Book III much enlarged using observational data Newton had wrenched from Flamsteed in a quarrel that broke their friendship; the precession of the equinoxes Book III prop. 39; and the cometary theory Book III props. 41 and 42 of which the visible monument in the volume is the folding engraved plate at p. 465 showing the parabolic orbit of the great comet of 1680. None of this revised material had been seen in print before. Cotes died of a fever on 5 June 1716 three years after publication aged thirty-three. When Newton heard he is recorded as saying that if Cotes had lived we might have known something - the only generous tribute Newton ever paid to anyone and a measure of how seriously the Principia of 1713 should be understood as a Newton-Cotes joint production rather than as a Newton solo.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>Cotes's Editoris Praefatio which opens the book after Newton's two prefaces is the first explicit sustained public defence of Newtonian natural philosophy as a method - induction from phenomena rather than hypothesis from first principles - and as a metaphysical position distinct from both Cartesianism and from Leibniz's emerging dynamical cosmology. Cotes attacks the Cartesian vortex theory of planetary motion directly and dismisses the charge that Newtonian gravitation is a causa occulta an occult quality smuggled in by an author who has no proper mechanical explanation for the action of bodies at a distance. He insists that gravity is to be regarded as a primary property of matter on a level with extension mobility and impenetrability. Newton who had explicitly told Bentley not to attribute that view to him declined to read the preface before publication and afterwards declined to disown it; his silence is itself eloquent and he was content for Cotes's harder line to stand as the official Newtonian position. I. B. Cohen in his Introduction to Newton's Principia 1971 called Cotes's preface the first clear public statement of the inductive method in any language. It is more than any text Newton himself ever wrote the founding manifesto of what the eighteenth century would call Newtonianism - and the Principia of 1713 as a result is the first edition in which Newtonianism has the shape of a party with a platform.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>By far the most important single addition to the second edition however is Newton's own - the Scholium Generale sent by him to Cotes on 2 March 1713 very late in the printing process and now the most quoted single passage in all of Newton's published work. It runs from page 481 to page 484 occupies the last leaves before the index and was clearly conceived by Newton as the philosophical and theological capstone of the entire Principia. The Scholium begins with a sustained attack on the Cartesian hypothesis of vortices - the same target Cotes has already softened in his preface - and then expands into the most extended discussion of the nature of God ever printed under Newton's name. The phrasing is famously austere: God is to be understood not through the familiar attributes of perfection which we may admire but through dominion in virtue of which we revere and adore him; he exercises this dominion in modo minime humano in modo nobis prorsus incognito and is utterly void of all body and bodily figure and can therefore neither be seen nor heard nor touched. There is no room in this theology for anything resembling the personal God of orthodox Christianity. Newton scholarship is now broadly agreed that the surface text is constructed in concentric layers with the uncontroversial argument from design occupying the outer skin and a heterodox attack on the doctrine of the Trinity concealed in the inner layers accessible only to readers prepared to follow Newton's deeply private theology. Denial of the Trinity remained a criminal offence in Britain until 1813 a full century after the Scholium first appeared in print; Samuel Clarke Newton's closest theological ally had published a controversial critique of the Trinity the year before. The most revolutionary book in the history of science championed throughout the eighteenth century as the model of orthodox natural theology ends on a quietly subversive note that Newton was content for only the cognoscenti to recognise.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>From God Newton turns abruptly to gravity and to the most quoted sentence in his entire published work. He acknowledges that he has not been able to discover from phenomena the cause of gravity and that he will not feign hypotheses about it: Hypotheses non fingo. The phrase has no published precedent. It does not occur in the 1687 Principia nor in the Opticks nor in any of Newton's earlier papers. Its first appearance in print is in this edition on a leaf added in the spring of 1713 almost as an afterthought and it has been the watchword of the Newtonian style of physics ever since - invoked by every subsequent generation of physicists who have wished to claim the authority of phenomena over speculation from the eighteenth-century anti-Cartesians through Mach and Duhem to the operationalists of the twentieth century. Whether Newton himself meant it as the categorical rejection of all hypothesising that it became is doubtful; the surrounding paragraphs make clear that he is rejecting a particular kind of speculative mechanical hypothesis about the cause of gravity rather than abjuring theoretical reasoning in general. But the slogan once printed took on a life entirely independent of its author's intentions and the 1713 Principia is the only edition in which one can encounter that life beginning.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The Scholium ends with a paragraph that has attracted if anything less notice than it deserves. Having declared that he frames no hypotheses about the cause of gravity Newton allows himself in the last paragraph of the entire Principia to speak of spiritus quidam subtilissimus - a most subtle spirit which pervades and lies hid in all gross bodies by means of which he proposes particles of bodies attract one another light is emitted reflected refracted and bent bodies are heated sensations are excited the limbs of animals move at the command of the will and electric bodies repel and attract. It is an extraordinary list and an extraordinary moment: Newton having spent the entire book establishing that gravity is a mathematical law without a known cause ends his most public work by gesturing toward a unified mediating substance that would account at once for gravity light heat sensation the action of will and the phenomena of electricity. He concludes by remarking only that these are things which cannot be explained in few words - and the Principia ends. The spiritus subtilissimus paragraph is the closest Newton ever came in print to a unified theory of the imponderables and it is the seed from which both the eighteenth-century aether physics of Hauksbee Desaguliers and Boscovich and through a longer historical filiation that runs through Faraday the nineteenth-century field-theoretic conception of physics would germinate. It survives only because Newton appended it to the General Scholium in March 1713 and Cotes set it in type before the press could be stopped - a textual moment in other words made possible only by this edition.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The remaining innovations of the second edition are smaller but worth recording. The dedication leaf is rewritten from 1687 - the Illustrissimae Societati Regali dedication that the present copy carries names King Charles II as the founder of the Royal Society and Queen Anne as the monarch under whose auspices it now flourishes in place of the original 1687 dedication that had named James II. The change is small and politically inevitable the Glorious Revolution had intervened James was an exile Newton himself had been knighted by Anne in 1705 but it is a reminder that this is the Principia of an established and triumphant national science rather than of a private mathematician operating at the edge of an institutional culture. Halley's celebrated Latin ode In viri praestantissimi D. Isaaci Newtoni opus hocce mathematico-physicum - the only verse tribute one major scientist has ever paid to the published work of another in seventeenth-century English science - is reprinted with its closing line Nec fas est propius mortali attingere Divos still in place. Newton's two prefaces the 1686 original and a brief new one dated Dabam Londini Mart. 28. 1713 in which he summarises the changes sit together for the first time. And - a small but real piece of editorial archaeology - the 1713 is the first edition of the Principia to carry an actual table of contents the Index Capitum totius Operis listing the section headings of Books I and II with their page references together with a sketchy alphabetical index at the rear. The 1687 had had nothing of the sort. The book is for the first time navigable. This too is a sign of Cotes's editorial mind.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The 1713 lunar theory deserves a closer look as the most contentious revision of the entire edition. Newton's reworking of Book III propositions 25 to 35 on the motion of the moon depended throughout on the unpublished observational data of John Flamsteed the first Astronomer Royal at Greenwich. Newton had had the use of Flamsteed's observations during the 1690s but the relationship had broken down spectacularly when Flamsteed declined to release further data without prior credit and Newton with Halley's complicity contrived to have Flamsteed's Historia Coelestis printed against his will in 1712 from a working draft. Flamsteed eventually recovered three hundred copies of the pirated edition and burned them publicly at the Royal Observatory; the corrected authorised Historia would not appear until 1725 six years after Flamsteed's death. The 1713 Principia is therefore not only an intellectual document but a forensic exhibit in one of the most acrid scientific quarrels of the period. Newton's lunar theory as recast under Cotes's editorial pressure is built on the very observations whose owner was at the same moment attempting to recall them from circulation; the elegant new propositions on lunar motion in Book III are materially the spoils of the Flamsteed quarrel. Cotes seems to have understood the awkwardness perfectly well and never raised it in correspondence. The result in any case is that the 1713 contains a lunar theory accurate to within a few minutes of arc - a substantial improvement on 1687 and the empirical basis on which Maupertuis and Clairaut would later test the predictions of Newtonian gravitation against the observed motion of the apsides of the lunar orbit the test that finally settled the eighteenth-century debate over whether universal gravitation was sufficient to account for the moon.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The print run of the second edition is famous: 750 copies against perhaps 250 of the first. Bentley's accounts have survived and show that the total cost of printing came to £117 4s 1½d; he sold 375 copies to booksellers and individuals at an average of 13s each with Crownfield the printer taking a further 200 at 11s yielding Bentley a profit of about £200 while still leaving substantial stock. Cotes who did the actual intellectual work received twelve presentation copies and no money. Some seventy or so further copies are recorded in a distribution list among Newton's papers as having been sent to named recipients across Europe - Cassini de la Hire Varignon Johann and Daniel Bernoulli Leibniz Machin - together with the major academies royal libraries and university collections from Paris to St Petersburg. The personal presentation to Queen Anne on 27 July 1713 is documented separately as is a copy Newton sent to Yale. Voltaire who had learned Newtonian physics from Maupertuis after his return from England in 1729 wrote the Eléments de la philosophie de Newton 1738 using the second edition; his personal copy survives at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Émilie du Châtelet working with Clairaut on her French translation through the 1740s and published posthumously in 1759 as Principes mathématiques de la philosophie naturelle - still the only French translation Newton has ever had - used the 1713 as her primary base collated against the 1726 third edition. The 1713 is therefore not merely the second edition: it is the edition through which Newtonian became a synonym for modern in eighteenth-century European thought and copies in unrestored or near-unrestored contemporary bindings with the original endpapers preserved are markedly less common on the market than the standard sale catalogues suggest.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>References: Babson 12 - Wallis 8 - Gray 8 - Babson Suppl. p. 8 - Norman 1587 - Gjertsen Newton Handbook pp. 463-4 and 475-6 - Cohen Introduction to Newton's Principia 1971 chapters VII-IX - ESTC T93210 - PMM 161 for the first edition.</p> <br /> <br/> <br/> <br /> <p>4to 235 × 190 mm pp. xxviii 484 8. Engraved Cambridge University arms vignette on the title by Samuel Gribelin signed S.G. at lower edge one folding engraved plate of the cometary orbit at p. 465 woodcut diagrams throughout the text woodcut head- and tail-pieces and initials. Paper a fine European laid stock chain lines horizontal at 25 mm spacing watermark a star with curling ornament visible in several gatherings consistent with imported Dutch paper of the period. Contemporary English calf blind-tooled rectangular panel on the boards raised bands on the spine with double gilt fillets at the bands single red morocco lettering-piece gilt NEWTON'S / PRINCIPIA / MATHEMATICA edges sprinkled red; spine and corners sympathetically renewed using the original spine leather where possible original pastedowns and free endleaves preserved. Old waterstaining at the upper outer corner of the title and at the fore-edges of the first and last gatherings not affecting text; old ink mark and minor surface marks to the upper cover; the body of the text crisp and clean throughout the engraved plate fresh the corrigenda leaf at the rear present.</p> . Cornelius Crownfield at the University Press] unknown
140945081Oakland & San Francisco: The Black Panther Party 1980. First edition. An extensive collection of 237 numbers in 234 issues Volume 2 Numbers 15-17 are printed in a single volume and Volume 6 Numbers 13 and 14 are as well. Intermittent run spanning from the first volume to the final volume the 20th. Newspaper changed title to The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service on March 13 1971.<p>Contents: Volume 1 Number 6; Vol. 2 Nos. 1-3 5-7 15-17 18 19 21; Vol. 3 Nos. 1 3 6 7 9-12 16 17 19-21 26 27 29 29 sic 31; Vol. 4 Nos. 3 3 sic 4 7 8 8 sic 9 12-15 17 18 18 but 19 20 21 22 22 sic 27 28 28 sic 29; Vol. 5 Nos. 4 12 13 15-18 20-25 27 30; Vol. 6 Nos. 1-6 10 11 13-14 16 18 21 23-30; Vol. 7 Nos. 1 3 8 17 19-27 29 30; Vol. 8 Nos. 1-25 28-30; Vol. 9 Nos. 1 3-8 10 12-15; Vol.10 Nos. 15 18 23 25 27 28 30; Vol. 11 Nos. 12 14 15 21 23 26 29; Vol. 12 Nos. 1 7 12 15 16 30; Vol. 13 Nos. 2 7 11 12 19 20 21 29 30; Vol. 14 Nos. 4 8 11-13 15 17 18 28; Vol. 15 Nos. 3 10-15 26-30 30 sic; Vol.16 Nos. 4 5 8-11 13 18 27-30; Vol. 17 No. 29; Vol. 18 Nos. 1 3-9 11 16-19 22-26 28 29 29 sic; Vols. 19 Nos. 3 5-7 7 sic 8 9; Vol. 20 Nos. 1 3; Extra Saturday October 5th 1968 Unnumbered. <p>A well-preserved and very substantial run of the Black Panther Party's official newspaper with the issues representing a large swath of the paper's content circulation and overall aesthetic. In terms of content Huey Newton was acknowledged as the chief theoretician of the Party and its newspaper though in terms of generating mass-appeal much of the credit goes to Emory Douglas: "Douglas's work on the Black Panther newspaper and for the party was fearless in content and style. He was the party's Revolutionary Artist graphic designer illustrator political cartoonist and the master craftsman of its visual identity. His distinctive illustrations styles cartooning skills and resourceful collage and image recycling made the paper as explosive visually as it was verbally.Part of Douglas's genius was that he used the visually seductive methods of advertising and subverted them into weapons of the revolution. His images served two purposes: to illustrate conditions that made revolution a reasonable response and to construct a visual mythology of power for people who felt powerless and victimized" Durant Sam ed. Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas pp.95-96.<p>Contains an over-arching glimpse of the art layout production and content of the newspaper as well as the rise and fall of the Black Panther Party with issues ranging from the earliest days through 1980. Visually stunning and innovative in its design and layout they tell the story of the Black Panthers' struggle fighting racism and institutional violence and oppression. A key publication responsible for shaping African American revolutionary thought in the twentieth century; runs this extensive are very uncommon in commerce. The Black Panther Party unknown
16932188Oxford: Oxford University Press 1693. First collected edition. Contemporary calf. Very Good. SCARCE FIRST EDITION OF THE COLLECTED WORKS of one of Newton's most important precursors John Wallis Savilian Professor 1649-1703 containing the first printed appearance of Newton's ideas on fluxions. A staunch promoter of English mathematicians Wallis repeatedly urged Newton to publish his theories before others laid claim to he work for the sake of "your Reputation & that of the nation" Gjertsen Newton Handbook 605. While Newton resisted for many years in 1693 Wallis published several letters from Newton in Vol. II of his Opera thereby introducing the concept of fluxional notation-pricked and dotted letters. In the preface to Vol. I 1695 Wallis refers briefly to Newton's claim to the discovery of Fluxions while Vol II 1693 has the first full account of Newton's invention of calculus. The third volume of Wallis's Opera contains previously unpublished correspondence between Newton and Leibniz the most important items of which are Newton's Epistola prior and Epistola posterior. "These two lengthy letters were sent to Leibniz in 1676 to acquaint him with the main lines of Newton's mathematical development. Epistola prior beginning with the binomial theorem went on to describe Newton's work on series. The second letter also contains much discussion on infinite series. It is best known however for Newton's reference to powerful and general methods he had developed for the drawing of tangents the determination of maxima and minima and the quadrature of curves. These he added he preferred to conceal within a quite insoluble anagram. A second and even longer anagram concealed Newton's claim to be able to solve fluxional equations. The solutions to both were publicly disclosed by Wallis 1699" ibid 189. Vol. 2 of the Opera also contains pp. 669-78 De Postulato Quinto; et Definitione Quinta; Lib. 6. Euclidis; disputatio geometrica Wallis's important attempt to prove the parallel postulate of Euclid also published here for the first time. "John Wallis gave a lecture on this topic. on the evening of 11 July 1663. He had been inspired by Nasr-Eddin's attempt on it which he referred to in his lecture to examine the question himself and his analysis is remarkable both for its originality and its caution. Indeed his view of the matter was to be much more profound than many a later writer's" Fauvel & Gray The History of Mathematics 510. This magnificent and comprehensive edition of Wallis's collected works was financed by and printed at Oxford University. In addition to several 'firsts' including those described above these volumes contain reprints of virtually all of Wallis's great books including the Arithmetica infinitorum and Mechanica Vol. 1 an augmented Latin edition of the Treatise of Algebra Vol. II and bilingual editions of a number of ancient Greek texts including Ptolemy's Harmonics Aristarchus's On the magnitudes and distances of the sun and moon and Archimedes's Sand-reckoner Vol. III. In addition to numerous other mathematical works the four volumes include his most popular work Grammaticae lingua anglicanae his "Treatise of Speech which formed a useful theoretical foundation for his pioneering attempts to teach deaf-mutes how to speak" DSB as well as an important tract on cryptography in which he records the methods he developed while deciphering for Cromwell the coded messages of Charles I. Wing W596 W566 W597. Babson 184. Roberts and Trent 345. see J.F. Scott The Mathematical Work of John Wallis London 1938; M. Baron The Origins of the Infinitesmal Calculus Oxford 1969 205-213; Richard Westfall The Life of Isaac Newton Cambridge 1993 207-209ff. Opera Mathematica. Volumen primum -Tertium - Opera quaedam miscellanea. Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre University Press 1695 1693 1699. Four volumes bound in three. Folio contemporary full paneled calf rebacked to style. Complete with four engravings on three leaves and three portraits Vols. I & II with the same portrait by Loggan dated 1678 and engraved by Burghers; Vol 3 by Sonmans dated 1698 and engraved by Burghers. With large bookplate inside each front cover reading "The Gift of Mr. Thomas Heatley Citizen and Iron-monger of London to the Mathematical School in Christ's Hospital Anno Dom. 1700". A very clean copy with only occasional light browning and foxing very handsomely bound. ONE OF THE MONUMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS. RARE. . Oxford University Press unknown books
1726188378London: William & John Innys printers to the Royal Society 1726. The final lifetime edition Third edition revised by Newton himself; the final and most lavish edition to appear in his lifetime. The revisions include a new preface by Newton and one of his final statements on the nature of philosophy. By 1726 the 83-year-old Newton was making a sustained effort to tidy up his scientific legacy. For the Principia that meant adapting his arguments in light of his many disputes with continental philosophers following the first edition of 1687. The third edition is perhaps most notable for the new Rule IV of Book III in which Newton codifies his contention that hypotheses and particularly Leibnizian aether hypotheses have no place in true philosophy. Newton also adds extensive revisions to the sections on fluxions and lunar motion. Henry Pemberton 1694-1771 a 30-year-old physician and correspondent of the Oxford Newtonian John Keill was selected as the co-editor although Newton remained the primary force shaping the edition. A contemporary reader has made four ink annotations throughout this copy on pages 388 414 416 and 465 along with a handful of underlinings. The reader is particularly interested in Newton's treatment of lunar theory: the annotation on page 414 observes that "faciliùs multò polest hic calculus perfici ope motûs lunaris" "this calculation could be completed much more easily with the help of the lunar movement". Quarto 240 x 188 mm pp. xxxiv 530 8. Engraved portrait frontispiece after George Vertue engraved illustration by John Senex at p. 506 woodcut tables diagrams headpiece and initial within the text. Title page lettered in red and black. Contemporary mottled calf spine rebacked to style and with later red morocco label covers with double-fillet panel in gilt. With December 1922 signature of one Herbert Brittain possibly the Treasury official and mathematics graduate 1894-1961 to front pastedown. Light rubbing extremities restored infrequent foxing to contents: a very good copy. Babson 13; ESTC T98375; Gray 9; Wallis II.9. unknown
1830124608London: Newton Son & Berry c. 1830-1836. Fine pair of rare early 19th century celestial and terrestrial table globes published by Newton Son & Berry. Both the celestial and terrestrial globe measure 12 inches in diameter with a calibrated brass meridian ring and 19 inch mahogany horizon ring decorated with mounted hand colored decorations. Mounted on ebonized oak stands. Each globe is comprised of 12 richly detailed hand-colored gores with polar calottes the terrestrial globe detailing the earth's landmasses major countries and cities and the celestial showing the major stars in various sizes related to their brightness displayed with a table of magnitudes. Major constellations and all twelve zodiac signs are illustrated with detailed hand-colored drawings. The cartouche on the celestial globe is inscribed "Newton's New & Improved Celestial Globe On which all the Stars Nebulae & Clusters contained in the extensive Catalogue of the late E. Wollaston E.R.S. are accurately laid down their Right Ascensions and Declinations having been recalculated for the Year 1830 by W. Newton. Manufactured by Newton Son & Berry Chancery Lane London Published 1836." In near fine condition with some light restoration. Each globe measures 19 inches tall. The sphericity of the Earth was established by Greek astronomers in the 3rd century BC with the earliest terrestrial globe appearing during that period. The earliest known globe was constructed by Crates of Mallus in Cilicia now Cukurova in modern-day Turkey in the mid-2nd century B.C.E. Now known as the Erdapfel the earliest extant terrestrial globe was produced in 1492 by German mapmaker navigator and merchant Martin Behaim in Nuremberg Germany. Traditionally globes were manufactured by gluing a printed paper map onto a sphere often made from wood. Newton, Son & Berry unknown books
17262210London: Guil. & Joh. Innys Regiae Societatis typographos 1726. Third Edition. contemporary full vellum. RARE 1726 THIRD EDITION OF NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA THE LAST EDITION EDITED BY NEWTON AND THE BASIS FOR ALL SUBSEQUENT EDITIONS. ONE OF ONLY 1250 COPIES PRINTED. "The Principia is generally described as the greatest work in the history of science. Copernicus Galileo and Kepler had certainly shown the way; but where they described the phenomena they observed Newton explained the underlying universal laws. The Principia provided the great synthesis of the cosmos proving finally its physical unity. Newton showed that the important and dramatic aspects of nature that were subject to the universal law of gravitation could be explained in mathematical terms within a single physical theory. With him the separation of natural and supernatural of sublunar and superlunar worlds disappeared. The same laws of gravitation and motion rule everywhere; for the first time a single mathematical law could explain the motion of objects on earth as well as the phenomena of the heavens. The whole cosmos is composed of inter-connecting parts influencing each other according to these laws. It was this grand conception that produced a general revolution in human thought equalled perhaps only by that following Darwin's Origin of Species. It was the final irrevocable break with a medieval conception based on Greek and Roman cosmology and a scholastic system derived from the medieval interpretation of Aristotle. Newton's universe almost independent of the spiritual order ushered in the age of rationalism scientific determinism and the acceptance of a mechanistic view of nature" Printing and the Mind of Man 161. On the history and importance of the third edition: Towards the end of his life Newton "gave one last effort to the Principia. It is clear that he regarded the Principia rather than the Opticks as his masterwork. He worked over the Principia without end to hone its language to a perfect expression of his ideas. Perhaps the appearance of a reprint of the second edition in Amsterdam in 1723 stimulated Newton to put his plan for a new edition into action. Perhaps a serious illness in 1722 reminded him that he could not delay forever. We know only that printing of an edition more sumptuous than either of the others began in the fall of 1723. As editor Newton had the services of a young member of the Royal Society Henry Pemberton. In the fall of 1723 Pemberton addressed to him the first of thirty-one communications which stretched over the following two-and-a-half years while the edition passed through the press. Through 1724 and 1725 the edition made its slow but steady progress toward completion with none of the delays that stopped the press during the second edition. Newton dated the preface 12 January 1726. It was the last day of March when Martin Folkes presented a copy 'richly Bound in morocco Leather' to the Royal Society in Newton's name. In all 1250 copies were printed." Westfall The Life of Isaac Newton. The third edition "contains a new preface by Newton and a large number of alterations" Babson 13. With portrait engraving by Vertue bound before first text leaf and numerous illustrations in text. Complete with the privilege leaf half-title dedication leaf index and ad leaf. London: Guil. & Joh. Innys Regiae Societatis typographos 1726. Quarto 186x241 mm contemporary full Dutch vellum; custom half-leather box. Unidentified early signatures on front pastedown half-title and ad leaf verso. Mild scuffing to binding boards a little bowed. Text with occasional light soiling and scattered foxing but generally clean. A beautiful copy. SCARCE IN AN UNRESTORED CONTEMPORARY BINDING. Guil. & Joh. Innys, Regiae Societatis typographos unknown books
1726H-142<p>Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica third edition half-title engraved portrait frontispiece title in red and black woodcut illustrations and diagrams some foxing and soiling contemporary calf joints and corners worn <strong>4to</strong> William & John Innys <strong>1726</strong>.<br />This edition was edited by Henry Pemberton and Sir Isaac Newton wrote a preface with new edits just one year before he passed away in 1727. <strong>This third edition printed in London is the very basis of all subsequent printings</strong> of the Principia and a true history existing through time.<br /><strong>One out of 1250 copies</strong> Demy 1000 regular issue see below printed and with complete pagination this copy is a remarkable and rare book in the history of science.</p><p>The 1726 edition was comprised of 1250 copies evidenced by William Bowyer's paper stock ledger which records the following: Superfine 50 largest paper; Royal 200 large paper; Demy 1000 regular issue. Royal copies can be identified by their size and CC watermark. See: Henry P. Macomber and Gerald G. Grubb "A census of the owners of copies of the 1687 first edition of Newton's Principia" <em>PBSA </em>47 1953 269-304 p.293. Babson 11-12 Wallis 9.</p> Guil. & Joh. Innys, Regiae Societatis typographos hardcover
198532175New York: NP 1985. First edition. vg. 1 Publicity photographs of Diane von Furstenberg by Helmut Newton & press photographs:<br /> <br /> A Four 8" x 10" b/w publicity photographs announcing the opening of Diane von Furstenberg's boutique all four in duplicate total of eight photographs. Two photographs by Helmut Newton show von Furstenberg modeling the "Fatale" & "Venezia" dress. All with typewritten information of design pasted on lower rear margin with text folding out below photograph.<br /> a "Fatale" dress of pearl pink silk marocain and black lace. A Gala gown from the Couture collection created for Diane von Furstenberg Fifth Avenue opening November 1984. Same image of Furstenberg by Newton depicted on original invitation card to the opening of her Couture Collection see # 4 below.<br /> b "Venezia" sumptuous swatches of imported black lace and black silk charmeuse for Gala occasions from the Couture collection created for Diane von Furstenberg Fifth Avenue opening November 1984.<br /> c "Zanzibar" a slim gown of Gondola black silk jersey with cocq feathers ruche for grand exits and Gala occasions from the Couture Collection created for Diane von Furstenberg Fifth Avenue opening November 1984.<br /> d Reproduction of a b/w drawing by architect Michael Graves on photo-paper of Furstenberg's Fifth Avenue storefront.<br /> <br /> B Press photos from 1984 Spring/Summer Couture Collection: Thirteen b/w 8" x 10" photos of two models showing eleven different designs. Three of the thirteen photographs in duplicate. Following four photos with typewritten information of design pasted on lower rear margin with text folding out below photograph:<br /> a"Canaletto" silk chiffon of floral print jacquard with pleated silk shantung collar. "Negroni" blouse of silk jersey and "Expresso" skirt of silk shantung 1 duplicate.<br /> b "Aria" evening gown with pond lilies of burnt-out chiffon floating over iridescent silk and a pleated iridescent handkerchief hemline in gentle motion about the ankles.<br /> c "Backstage" mitsouko jersey dress of black and white stripes with pink shirt and an unexpected black inset of crisp white lace.<br /> d "Concerto" gown with snugly draped torso of sienna silk jersey and petal skirt of blue organza. A midnight blue bolero of three-dimensional lace not shown accompanies the dress to be donned at will. <br /> Two photographs with handwritten information on verso: a "Tee-shirt de Mitsonko Racine noi et blanc Eté 85" 1 duplicate. b "Cache coeur de Mitsonko Racine Jonquille Eté 85."<br /> <br /> Includes 3 Polaroid's pasted on heavy card stock with handwritten info at rear: <br /> a 1 color Polaroid on 1 card stock: "Alma dress Fabric: Racine Trais bleu." Color Polaroid shows model in red dress with purple scarf.<br /> b 2 color Polaroid's on 1 card stock: "Hubeid" Fabric Racine Trais bleu." First showing model in black skirt with blue & black striped top the other depicts dress only but with blue skirt and red and black stripes.<br /> <br /> <br /> 2 Fully & partly colored renderings original pencil & ink drawings in various states by Diane von Furstenberg and her staff of her 1985 Fall Couture designs: Majority drawn on 8 1/4" x 11 1/2' leaves. <br /> <br /> a 75 original fully colored renderings. Many accompanied with handwritten notes and information on design. Some of designs shown: Sirocco Candlelight Delta Tornado Hurricane Blizzard Torrent Martini Margarita Screwdriver Negroni Descent Divan. Six drawings with some water staining which bled some of the colors. Some creasing to parts of leaves. Overall very good condition.<br /> b 22 partly colored original drawings and renderings. Some accompanied with handwritten notes and information on design. Two designs on smaller leaves 4" x 6" & 3" x 8 1/4". Minor creasing to edges of leaves. Very good condition.<br /> c 18 original b/w pencil drawings. 1 on smaller sheet 4 1/4" x 6 1/2". Few designs with notes. Three punch holes along inner edge of each leaf. 1 leaf water stained & repaired with tape. Other leaves in very good condition. <br /> d 15 original drawings in black ink 2 in blue ink 1 on smaller sheet 4" x 7 1/4". Majority with notes and annotations. Three punch holes along inner edge of each leaf. Water staining on four leaves all others in very good condition.<br /> e 7 Xerox copies of designs heightened with original hand coloring. One design with printed sticker: "Diane von Furstenberg Collection. Style Cadiz # 8158 Evening Dress." One wool jersey design with notes. Three punch holes along inner edge of each leaf. <br /> f 11 Xerox copies of designs with notes. Designs shown: Sonata Savanna Capriccio Divan and others. Two leaves with water staining some with three punch holes along inner margin.<br /> <br /> <br /> 3 Fall/Winter 85 Collection - Ensembles' Combinations: Original swatches of different fabrics with color & b/w Xerox copies of designs closer to production. <br /> <br /> Colorful collection of over 300 swatches in various sizes: Mistral Twist Arida Concerto Espresso Steppe Tundra Lausanne Shiver Reef Fjord Atoll Iceberg Sirocco Savanna Cuba Libre Lagoon Black Russian Glimpse Gin Fizz Cuba Libre Ludwig Rob Roy Hurricane Bellini Polo Ascott Capulet Solinas etc. Most swatch samples accompanied with Xerox copy of designs in which the fabrics were used. <br /> All leaves & samples in ring folder divided into four parts: Daytime Cocktail Hostess & Evening. <br /> a Daytime: 138 swatches mounted on 19 leaves. Fabrics were used in the Descent Blizzard Delta Slogan and other styles.<br /> b Cocktail: 105 swatches mounted few taped onto 21 leaves. Styles: Sonata Delta Margarita Negroni Screwdriver Camaleon.<br /> c Evening: 51 swatches mounted on 18 leaves. Styles: Tobogan Favorite Concerto Nymphea It's Hot Up Here Ada High Noon. Three Favorite style swatches accompanied by 3 Polaroid's of model in that very same evening dress & color Xerox copy of drawing.<br /> d Hostess: 63 swatches mounted on 15 leaves. Styles: Divan Love Seat Cupid Martini Bloody Mary.<br /> <br /> Original sticker of Diane von Furstenberg Fifth avenue with handwritten "Fall 1985 Collection" pasted on front cover of ring folder. Creasing to some leaves otherwise good to very good condition. Swatches in fine condition.<br /> <br /> <br /> 4 Printed Invitation to von Furstenberg's first Couture Collection & Publicity Leaf of Furstenberg by Helmut Newton:<br /> <br /> a 7" x 10" fold-out invitation. Inside of front fold shows b/w reproduction of a photograph by Helmut Newton of Furstenberg modeling the "Fatale" dress 8" x 10" publicity photograph of same image present above in part A. Opposite side with printed text: "Diane von Furstenberg cordially invites _____ to personally preview her first Couture Collection. By Appointment only. Nancy Bard 212 753-1111." Slightly creased but overall very good.<br /> b Advertising sheet in duplicate 6 1/2" x 8 3/4" reproduction of a color photograph by Helmut Newton of Furstenberg posing in netted Rose-hat and elegant black jacket. Photograph was taken especially on the occasion for the opening of her first Couture Collection. Image printed on 8 1/2" x 11" sheet with von Furstenbergs logo on lower margin and text: "Couture Collection - Exclusively at 783 Fifth Avenue New York - 212 753-1111." Top right corner of both leaves slightly creased. Overall good to very good condition.<br /> c Three typewritten press-release letters announcing the opening of the boutique. Two on von Furstenberg's letterhead. Letters contain biography architectural details of her store and notes on her first couture collection.<br /> <br /> <br /> 5 2 typewritten & 1 handwritten price list:<br /> a Price List: Boutique "Diane" - Fall 84 / Spring 85 Display. 4 stapled typewritten leaves.<br /> b Retail Price List: Smart Lunch & Vernissage. 1 typewritten leaf. Edges and corner slightly creased.<br /> c 1 handwritten price list. Diane von Furstenberg is one of the most successful and influential fashion designers in the world. Belgian-born von Furstenberg arrived in New York in 1970. Only four years later she became famous for creating the "wrap dress" which launched a liberating style movement for women around the world. She also became very successful with her in-house cosmetic line taking the beauty business by storm. In the early 1980's von Furstenberg sold her cosmetic business and returned to her fashion roots opening her first luxury boutique "Diane Von Furstenberg Fifth Avenue" on the ground floor of the Sherry Netherland Hotel at 783 Fifth Avenue in New York City. The Michael Graves - designed store carried her new couture collection called "Diane" many of the designs of that collection present in our collection. It was promoted with a campaign shot by Helmut Newton who was the first to photograph Diane in her new line item # 1in our lot. After relocating to Europe she ran the couture business from afar while pursuing other business interests in France. After returning to the United States in 1990 she realized she no longer had control of the brand bearing her name. In order to reconnect with customers and the business of fashion Von Furstenberg pioneered the television-shopping movement by developing a colorful line of fashion generating millions in sales. In 1997 she re-launched her company with the iconic wrap dress that started it all. In 2005 she was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Council of Fashion Designers of America for her contribution and tremendous influence on the fashion industry. In a remarkable career of over 4 decades von Furstenberg proved herself a financial genius and fashion wizard whose achievement was based on creativity imagination and hard work. As of the present her DVF fashion brand is sold in over 60 countries. NP unknown
178314487London 1783. Diameter: 70mm 2.75 inches. Globe 12 hand-coloured engraved paper gores clipped at 65 degrees latitude with two polar calottes over a papier mâché and plaster sphere varnished housed within original shagreen over paste-board clamshell case with hooks and eyes lined with 12 hand-coloured engraved celestial gores with two polar calottes varnished. The case split in both halves where hinge would have been loss to exterior and minor loss to celestial gores. Biography During the first half of the nineteenth century the firm of Newton together with Bardin and Cary occupied a leading position in the manufacture of globes in London. The firm was established by John Newton in 1783 and operated originally from the Globe & Sun 128 Chancery Lane moving to 97 Chancery Lane in 1803 before settling at 66 Chancery Lane in 1817. John Newton 1759-1844 was trained by Thomas Bateman fl1754-81 who had previously been apprenticed to Nathaniel Hill fl1746-1768. Newton's first globe was a revised edition of Hill's 1754 pocket globe which he published in 1783 in association with William Palmer. The partnership dissolved shortly after and Newton continued to publish the pocket globe under his own name. John's second son William Newton 1786-1861 joined the firm between 1814-1816 which traded under the name J. & W. Newton. In the same year the firm produced a new series of globes including a new pocket globe. By the 1830s the firm was also active as a patent agent and was joined by Miles Berry a civil engineer and patent agent after which the firm was known as Newton Berry & Son. In 1842 William's eldest son William Edward Newton 1818-1879 joined the business followed by his brother Alfred Vincent Newton 1821-1900. The firm became known as W. Newton & Son or once again on the death of William as simply Newton & Son from 1861 until about 1883. Perhaps the greatest triumph for the Newton family was the Great Exhibition of 1851 where aside from the globes they exhibited from 150 to 635mm 1 to 25 inches in diameter they were awarded a prize medal for a manuscript terrestrial globe of six feet in diameter. Geography Newton used Hill's copper plates from his 1754 pocket globe for the present globe with a number of alternations and updates. He has changed the text within the cartouche to feature his own name however he retains the rococo cartouche that Hill used. Newton added Captain Cook's track and updated the Australian coastline with his discoveries including "New Holland" "New South Wales" "Botany Bay" "Dimens Land" "Lewins Land" the "Isles of St Francis" and "New Zeeland". The globe shows the equinoctial graduated in degrees and the conforming ecliptic is highlighted in green. The prime meridian passes through London and the principal land masses are outlined in colour and annotated with some of the major rivers and mountain ranges. The oceans show the winds with islands labelled and printed with dotted lines for Admiral Anson's Tract and the tract of Captain Cook's first voyage in 1760 while the North Pacific region features a rococo scroll title cartouche. Astronomy The gores are pasted to the inside of the case and the cartography features stars expressed in varying orders of magnitude and allegorical representations of the constellations finely executed. Dekker GLB0029; Dekker and van der Krogt fig.57; for reference see Dahl and Gauvin pp.93-95; van der Krogt Hil 1 and Hil 4; Worms and Baynton-Williams pp.318-319; Dekker pp.355-357. unknown
1726vBC4008<p>RARE 1726 THIRD EDITION OF NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA THE LAST EDITION PUBLISHED IN HIS LIFETIME EDITED BY NEWTON HIMSELF THE BASIS FOR ALL SUBSEQUENT EDITIONS. ONE OF ONLY 1250 COPIES PRINTED. AT 300 FAR FEWER REMAIN! London: Guil. & Joh. Innys Regiae Societatis typographos 1726. Quarto 240 x 192 mm. Lauded by Albert Einstein as "perhaps the greatest intellectual stride that has ever been granted to any man to make" Newton's Principia is arguably the most influential book in history. Grounded on the premise that virtually everything in the universe is amenable to scientific understanding this transformative milestone abounding with interdisciplinary impact "is generally described as the greatest work in the history of science. Copernicus Galileo and Kepler had certainly shown the way; but where they described the phenomena they observed Newton explained the underlying universal laws. The Principia provided the greatest synthesis of the cosmos proving finally its physical unity. Newton showed that the important and dramatic aspects of nature that were subject to the universal law of gravitation could be explained in mathematical terms with a single physical theory. With him the separation of the natural and supernatural of sublunar and superlunar worlds disappeared. The same laws of gravitation and motion rule everywhere; for the first time a single mathematical law could explain the motion of objects on earth as well as the phenomena of the heavens. The whole cosmos is composed of inter-connecting parts influencing each other according to these laws. It was this grand conception that produced a general revolution in human thought equaled perhaps only by that following Darwin's Origin of Species… Newton is generally regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time and the founder of mathematical physics. It was the final irrevocable break with a medieval conception based on Greek and Roman cosmology and a scholastic system derived from the medieval interpretation of Aristotle. Newton's universe almost independent of the spiritual order ushered in the age of rationalism scientific determinism and the acceptance of a mechanistic view of nature" PMM 161. Dissatisfied with the first two editions of his own masterpiece London 1687; Amsterdam 1723 Newton towards the end of his life "gave one last effort to the Principia. It is clear that he regarded the Principia rather than the Opticks as his masterwork. He worked over the Principia without end to hone its language to a perfect expression of his ideas… . Perhaps a serious illness in 1722 reminded him that he could not delay forever. We know only that the printing of an edition more sumptuous than either of the others began in the fall of 1723." Westfall The Life of Isaac Newton. With portrait engraving by Vertue bound before first text leaf and numerous illustrations in text. Complete with the privilege leaf half-title dedication leaf index and ad leaf. 240 x 192 mm. 18th-century paneled calf gilt-lettered spine rebacked hinges cracked but holding. Frontispiece caption trimmed with some loss to artists' signatures minor foxing and toning but a very good crisp copy. Engraved armorial bookplate of the Earl of Hopetoun. Third edition revised and expanded edited by Henry Pemberton M.D. F.R.S. contains a new preface by Newton and many alterations and clarifications the scholium on fluxions chief among them. Sir Isaac Newton died on March 31 1727 at the age of 84 one year after his treasured edition was published. This Third Edition of his Principia is the final definitive statement of the man who invented calculus determined the composition of light and discovered the laws of gravity and motion which govern the universe the founder of modern science Sir Isaac Newton. Book #vBC4008. $26000. We specialize in rare Ayn Rand and other legends and landmarks.</p> Guil. & Joh. Innys hardcover
18481803065Daniel Adee 1848. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine/No Jacket. Near fine TRUE first American edition 1st issue as stated on the title page. Some water stains on page edges. Previous owner's bookplate on front pastedown. Rubbing on outside spine and corners and at bottom of spine. Tape at endpapers and pastedowns along gutters. Housed in custom-made slip case. Daniel Adee hardcover books
18481803065Daniel Adee 1848. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine/No Jacket. Near fine TRUE first American edition 1st issue as stated on the title page. Some water stains on page edges. Previous owner's bookplate on front pastedown. Rubbing on outside spine and corners and at bottom of spine. Tape at endpapers and pastedowns along gutters. Housed in custom-made slip case. Daniel Adee hardcover
