Spiritalium Liber. A Federico Commandino Urbinate, ex Graeco, nuper in Latinum conversus.

Urbini, cum Privilegio Gregorii XIII, 1575. 4to. 2 leaves. 70 pages. (i.e. 80). Contemporary limp vellum, handwritten title on the spine. First Edition of this important work by the Greek inventor and mathematician Heron of Alexandria (1st century AD.C.), devoted to the automata and mechanical devices of his invention. Songbirds, puppets, slot machines, a fire pump, a hydraule and, his most famous invention, the eolipile. This machine, the oldest to use steam, consists of a sphere mounted on a pot with an axial rod and equipped with two no no noles that produce a rotational movement when the steam escapes (see Encyclopaeida Universalis). "Although many of the devices are toys or parlor-tricks, that was a fashion of the day, and Hero's matter-of-fact treatment clearly indicates that his interest was in the way they worked. Cardwell notes that Hero of Alexandria had, or at least proposed, a model steam engine in the form of a reaction turbine, that would actually work". Many wood engravings in the text representing the different mechanisms. Very rare printing of Urbino where were apparently printed only three books throughout the 16th century, all printed in 1575 in the second known printing workshop of the city. The first had been conducted by an itinerant printer, Heinrich of Cologne, who had printed some books there at the end of the 15th century. Beautiful copy, very pure in its original limp vellum. Roberts and Trent, 161.