Oeuvres by MARIOTTE, EDME - 1717

Leiden: Pierre Vander, 1717. Ex Libris. Contemporary vellum. Very Good. 1st edition. 4to (247 x 195 mm). Ex Libris. 2 Volumes bound in contemporary vellum over boards. [12] [2]- 320pp with 13 (one bis) folding plates; [2] [321]- 701 [35, including 2 page catalog] pp with 13 folding plates. This collection of the complete works of Mariotte is illustrated with 26 folding copper plates. There is an inscription on each title page: "Bibliotheca Viennensis Scholarum Ciarum de Virgem Fidelem, 1781." There is worming on paste down and free end paper near upper and lower gutter regions of both volumes, not affecting text of any preliminary pages. General browning to some plates with some spotting to clear region of fore edges of text block. This is a wide margin copy.

This is the first edition of the collected works of Father Mariotte who was a physicist and Roman Catholic priest. He performed numerous experiments to elucidate nature of heat, cold, light, sight, color, water. His papers on hydrostatics and hydraulics confirmed Torricelli's work on outflow speed of fluids and demonstrated flow resistance in supply pipes. A major contribution is that he discoveredindependently of Boyle that the volume of a gas varies inversely as the pressure, going further than Boyle in noting that this inverse relation holds only for constant temperature. He also investigated laws of impact between elastic bodies and invented apparatus to verify them. Noted for invention of laboratory equipment such as Mariotte's tube. (Debus, World Who's Who in Science, 1968).