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8vo (165 × 102 mm), pp. [xiv], 295, [1], bound without initial blank. Text within ruled borders, 8 full-page engraved illustrations depicting mechanical apparatus, numerous woodcut illustrations to text. Very narrow and small waterstain to extreme foremargins of 5 or so leaves, otherwise very nice and clean. Contemporary calf, sides with blindruled borders and thistle cornerpieces. Rubbed, corners worn but recently expertly repaired and rebacked to style by Bernard Middleton. A very good, well-margined copy.
Second edition, issued in the same year as the first with a new title-page. It is “the first text on mechanics available in the English language. It is divided into two parts “Archimedes or Mechanical Powers” and “Daedalus or Mechanical Motions”- the latter part describing various machines, including strange devices and possibilities, such as a land vehicle powered by wind, submarines, flying automata, clocks, magnetic perpetuum mobile, etc. His sources were Guidobaldo’s Mechanicorum liber and Mersenne’s Cogitata physico-mathematica... One may see Wilkins’ work as a popular version of Mersenne’s work” (Biblioteca Mechanica). Wilkins was a leading figure in the English scientific renaissance, being, at various times influential at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and in the Royal Society (of which he was president from 1660-1661). He is known also for his conjectures on extra-terrestrial life (The discovery of a world in the moone, 1638). Both the first and second editions bear the date 1648.
Honeyman 3121; Wheeler Gift 126; Biblioteca Mechanica 354; Poggendorff II, 1328.
£1500.00
(equal to approx. US$2372.52* or €1859.19* for 19 May 2012)
* Dollar and Euro prices are given as a guideline only. The actual exchange rate may vary according to your payment option.
