RELATIVITY. The Special And The General Theory. Signed by Einstein, Albert - 1921

Basel, Andreas Cratander, 1522. With 2 richly figured woodcut title borders by Hans Franck, and many woodcut figured initials. 20 unn. leaves, 220 pp., 44 unn. leaves. Folio. 18th-century calf with richly gilt spine, gilt armorial supralibros of Karl Theodor von der Pfalz on both covers (signed B.P. in lowest compartment). Basel, (Andreas Cratander), 1522. Pomponius Mela's famous Latin "Geography" of the earliest surviving Latin work on geography, present here in the epochal edition by the great Swiss humanist Joachim von Watt or Vadianus (1484-1551), first published in a textually shorter edition in Vienna, 1518: 23, 132 ff., see VD 16 M 2310). The present second edition is revised and augmented, and is the first to contain the "Loca aliquot" in which Vadianus once more confirmed his modern scientific point of view by critizising the obsolete one of Johannes Camertus. Further more, this second edition contains the famous letters by Vadian to Rudolph Agricola with the… Read More

Philadelphia: William W. Woodward, 1806. Hardcover. Very Good -. This American Edition, printed from the last London edition, edited by William James, mathematical instrument maker, is carefully revised and corrected, by Robert Patterson, Professor of Mathematicks, and Teacher of Natural Philosophy, in the University of Pennsylvania." 508 p., 10 folded leaves of engraved plates; 22 cm. Contemporary full calf with modern tissue joint repair; gilt-tooled decoration on spine. This volume includes lectures on optics, vision, telescopies and miscroscopes, areas of the author's specialization. The 10 plates all illustrate aspects of optics. In Very Good- Condition: lacking original spine label; tissue repair of joints and hinges; faint dampstain along lower edge of a few plates; plate IV has a separation of 2 cm. from upper edge along a fold, and plate X one of 3 cm.; some foxing on plates; otherwise, clean and tight.

New-Haven: Printed and Published by S. Converse. Hard Cover. vi, [1], 404 p., 6 plates (4 folding), 1 folding map; 21.5 cm. Errata leaf after p. vi. Four sections: 1, Geology, Minerology, Topography, etc.; 2, Botany; 3, Zoology; 4, Chemistry, Physics, Mechanics, and Miscellaneous. Then follows (pp. 170-400) Intelligence and Miscellanies: Foreign; Domestic. Bound in 3/4 leather by Hope Bindery; shadow of engravied frontispiece on title-page; very good. Stock#OB610.

1880. [London, Eyre and Spottiswoode], 1880, 27th November + 1882 + 1885 (1): 8vo. Unbound. With a recent, discreete paper spine. A few smaller tears to extremities. 4 pp. + 1 plate (showing electric light bulbs].(2): 8vo. Original self-wrappers. Stitched at spine. Near mint.(3): 4 pages 8vo. Scarce original printed patent for the seminal invention that is the incandescent light bulb. Though usually erroneously ascribed to Thomas Edison, it was in fact Joseph Swan who invented the light bulb and ended the dark ages. - Here sold together with the extremely scarce offprint of Swan's 1882 speech on his seminal invention as well as a highly important and interesting autograph letter on the same subject, namely "the new filament or "Artificial Silk" as I have been calling it", in which Swan also confirms his priority in invention and warns against letting the withsent speciman fall into the hands of lamp makers. Swan first publicly demonstrated his incandescent carbon lamp at a lecture for the Newcastle… Read More

Washington D.C.: The Smithsonian Institution, 1896. Hardcover. Excellent. 4to - over 9¾ - 12" tall. Large octavo. Original green cloth, titles to upper board gilt, yellow coated endpapers. Corners and tail of spine bumped slightly affecting leaves, else a very fresh copy in excellent condition. First separate edition, first printing of the first publication on the discovery of argon, which led to Nobel Prizes for its co-discoverers. "Few discoveries have been as dramatic as the discovery of argon in the atmosphere by Lord Rayleigh and William Ramsay, professor of chemistry at University College, London. The discovery of argon involved a bitter public dispute concerning the legitimacy of a chemical element whose most important characteristic was its inertness, and which forced the chemists to reassess the very notion of a chemical element." Rayleigh had begun work to determine the densities of atmospheric gases in 1882. In 1892 he uncovered a strange discrepancy between the atomic weight of… Read More

Herschel, William. On The Quantity and Velocity Of Solar Motion. London, W. Bulmer and Co. From Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 1806. Thin 4to, size approx 220mm x 280mm. Recent brown cloth hardcover with label to front. Pp 32, 6 plates, 2. [pages 205- 237, plates IV-IX as referenced within text]. All pages bright and clean, plates have light foxing. Paper read on February 27, 1806 to the Royal Society estimating the speed of the Suns travel through space.

Basel, Andreas Cratander, 1522. With 2 richly figured woodcut title borders by Hans Franck, and many woodcut figured initials. 20 unn. leaves, 220 pp., 44 unn. leaves. Folio. 18th-century calf with richly gilt spine, gilt armorial supralibros of Karl Theodor von der Pfalz on both covers (signed B.P. in lowest compartment). Basel, (Andreas Cratander), 1522. Pomponius Mela's famous Latin "Geography" of the earliest surviving Latin work on geography, present here in the epochal edition by the great Swiss humanist Joachim von Watt or Vadianus (1484-1551), first published in a textually shorter edition in Vienna, 1518: 23, 132 ff., see VD 16 M 2310). The present second edition is revised and augmented, and is the first to contain the "Loca aliquot" in which Vadianus once more confirmed his modern scientific point of view by critizising the obsolete one of Johannes Camertus. Further more, this second edition contains the famous letters by Vadian to Rudolph Agricola with the… Read More

1880. [London, Eyre and Spottiswoode], 1880, 27th November + 1882 + 1885 (1): 8vo. Unbound. With a recent, discreete paper spine. A few smaller tears to extremities. 4 pp. + 1 plate (showing electric light bulbs].(2): 8vo. Original self-wrappers. Stitched at spine. Near mint.(3): 4 pages 8vo. Scarce original printed patent for the seminal invention that is the incandescent light bulb. Though usually erroneously ascribed to Thomas Edison, it was in fact Joseph Swan who invented the light bulb and ended the dark ages. - Here sold together with the extremely scarce offprint of Swan's 1882 speech on his seminal invention as well as a highly important and interesting autograph letter on the same subject, namely "the new filament or "Artificial Silk" as I have been calling it", in which Swan also confirms his priority in invention and warns against letting the withsent speciman fall into the hands of lamp makers. Swan first publicly demonstrated his incandescent carbon lamp at a lecture for the Newcastle… Read More

Rouen: Chez Raphael du Petit Val, 1588. Boards. Good. 32mo. [approximately 4.5 (tall) x 3 inches]; pp. 911, [81]; old calf rubbed and lightly worn at tips, recently rebacked in morocco retaining earlier boards; contemporary endpapers spotted and stained; title page with wood engraved device; some text leaves shave at top edge with slight loss of lettering at headers; worming to margins and text with scattered loss of letters, though not entire words, in portions of the text; else generally clean throughout; a good, sound copy overall. Boards. Revised, corrected and enlarged edition. (There were more than one hundred editions of this book in at least six languages to the late eighteenth century.) Illustrated with six woodcuts in the text (from pp. 850-863) showing an alchemist's workshop with various instruments, including the "Balneum Marie" or "Mary's Bath" a type of double boiler used by alchemists. The engraved device at the title page is of interest for the Hermetic legend "Deo Duce" ("God as my… Read More

New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007. Octavo. Original yellow boards, black paper backstrip, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. A little light rubbing at the edges, minor bump to the upper corner of the boards. An excellent copy in the jacket with a little creasing at the head of the spine panel and a minor vertical crease near the top of the spine panel. Sixth printing, published in the same year as the first. Presentation copy inscribed by the author in elaborate calligraphy on the half title, "To: Ravonne, Welcome to the Universe, Neil D. Tyson, May 2007". Uncommon signed. The present volume is a collection of forty-two essays originally published in Tyson's "Universe" column in Natural History Magazine between 1995 and 2005. Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson's (1958 - ) interest in astronomy began during childhood, when he viewed the Moon's surface through a friend's binoculars. Tyson studied at Harvard, the University of Texas, and Columbia, then joined the faculty of… Read More