Rare books from Kuenzig Books

[ New York ], 1902. First Edition. limp leather. Good. First Edition. 3 1/2 inches by 6 inches. A small lined notebook with Grant's address on the inside cover noting 232 exposures which he took, Each entry includes the Date of Exposre, Plate used, Exposure, Time of Day, Stop Lens and Light. Images taken include Maine (Kittery, etc) and other locations in NH and elsewhere. The address in the front of the notebook places Oliver R. Grant at 2236 South Boulevard in NYC. In 1902, he was listed as a student at Columbia University in Volume 24 of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. An interesting, unique view into amateur photography at the turn of the last century. A few family letters are included. Sadly, the images no longer remain with the record book. limp leather.

[ Gloucester Massachusetts and others ]: [ self published ], 1935. First Edition. Near Fine. First Edition. An archive of material related to American Inventor John Hays Hammond, Jr. The archive includes 4 letters to Janet Mabie (of Eaton Centre, New Hampshire) all from 1935. 2 comment on a Mr. Lear "who curiously enough is in the same situation that I am in regard to the Navy and foreign patents. Perhaps we may be able to work together to break up this ridiculous threat upon the part of the Navy Department." The other 2 related to Miss Mabie gathering notes for "magazine use" and Hammond setting up a meeting between Mabie and Herbert Stone of Yachting magazine. In addition to these letters, there is an 8 page carbon typescript (8 1/2 x 11 inches) about Hammond by Mabie that is quite interesting, giving insights into Hammond as a person and inventor. It is a fascinating read, and no doubt would add (if not published, which we have not been able to confirm one way or the other) to the portrait of… Read More

New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1956. First American Edition. Cloth. Near Fine. First American Edition. x, 305 pages. 8vo. Publisher's blue cloth. Lacks the dust jacket. SIGNED by author Wilkes on the title page. Scarce thus. Previous owner's name (KH Westlake) on front flyleaf. Cloth. "An early book on the principles underlying the construction and use of automatic digital computers. The first chapter contains a brief survey of computer development from Babbage's time onward; other chapters focus primarily on logical design and programming. The book includes much detailed information on ENIAC, EDVAC, EDSAC, the Harvard Mark I and Mark II machines, and the Bell Laboratories Relay Computer Models V and VI." (Origins of Cyberspace 1040). Wilkes was a British computer scientist of some note. In 1945, Wilkes was appointed as the second director of the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory (later known as the Computer Laboratory), was a founding member of the British Computing Society, a… Read More

Springfield: D. B. Spooner & Co., Photographers, 1858. First Edition. Boards. Very Good. First Edition. Title page and "statistics" (four pages) plus 62 portraits w/tissue guards and interleaved blank leaves (most with signatures or inscriptions from the sitter). Frontispiece engraving of the college signed: "Thos. Chubbuck, Engr. Springfield, Ms." and "Published by J.S. & C. Adams" Statistics leaf signed in print on verso "Samuel Bowles and Company, printers." 4to. 9 1/2 x 12 inches. Decorated leather binding (worn at extremities). "Andrew Josiah Clapp" in gilt on front cover [his album]. "Portraits | Amherst | 1858" in gilt on spine. Two library stamps ("Southampton Public Library") crossed out with no other markings. Photographs are salt prints, oval format, approximately 4 ¾ x 6 inches. Tonality varies, with scattered fading and foxing. Boards. Leaf titled "Statistics" has a list of each student, residence, and when they entered and left college (and if graduated). It also notes that there are… Read More

New York: American Institute of Electrical Engineers, 1952. First Edition. Wraps. Very Good. First Edition. 114 pages. 8 1/4 x 11 inches. Publisher's tan printed wrappers. Text illustrations. "B-185 copy 29" inked on front wrapper. Glue residue on inside rear cover. Otherwise clean with no other markings. Minor wear to extremities. Wraps. The first joint AIEE-IRE Computer conference, conducted with the assistance of the newly created Association for Computing Machinery. The purpose of the conference was "to assess the adequacy of the designs of present working high-speed digital computers in order to point out the direction which computer design should go, to make comptuers best for the jobs that they have been doing and for the jobs that they will have to do" (from MacWilliam's keynote speech). 18 papers were delivered, including "The UNIVAC System" by Eckert, "Performance of the UNIVAC System" by McPherson, "The Burroughs Laboratory Computer" by Hoberg, "The ORDVAC" by Meagher, "The operation… Read More

[London]: [C. Davis, Printer to the Royal Society], 1753. First Edition. Extract. Very Good. First Edition. 565-568 pages. 4to. 19 x 24 cm. (7 1/4 x 9 1/4 inches). An extract from "Philosophical Transactions Giving some Account of the Present Undertakings, Studies, and Labours, of the Ingenious in Many Considerable Parts of the World ... Vol. XLVII For the Years 1751 and 1752...London: Printed for C. Davis, MDCCLIII" The article offered here, "A Letter of Benjamin Franklin, Esq; to Mr. Peter Collinson, F. R. S. concerning an electrical Kite" is found on pages 565-567 and is complete. Browned at the edges, leaves separated. Extract. "Until the middle of the eighteenth century electricity was known only in its static form, [often experimentally collected in Leiden jars]...The most dramatic result of [Benjamin Franklin]'s researches was the proof that lightening is really an electrical phenomenon. Others had made such a suggestion before him - even Newton himself - but it was [Franklin] who provided… Read More

Prov. R. I. [ Providence, Rhode Island ]: Henry L. Tillinghast, 1855. First Edition. Near Fine. First Edition. Broadside. Single leaf, printed on recto only. 9 x 6 1/4 inches. Wove paper with no watermarks. Cleanly trimmed (with minor variation on upper edge). A nice impression noting some ink ghosting (presumably from other copies printed at the same time). Signed in type "J. A. Foster" at base of leaf. Intended for brief use in a town or village, these broadsides had a low survival rate. The photographer would pin them up or circulate in the village they were in, drumming up whatever business they could with this new wonder. Once they left, there was no use for the advertisement anymore. Traveling photographers left fewer traces of their businesses - even semi-permanent establishments could put advertisements on their photographs, in local papers, etc. The itinerant photographer was just that - moving around constantly. It is a wonder any record survived - and most we find were those presumably… 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

[no place]: [no publisher], [no date]. Very Good. Faux leather protective roll with three snap closures, containing one portrait on paper. The whole connected between two large (1 3/4 inch) dowel halves on one end. The salesman could add various portraits to the assemblage by separating the two half dowels, adding additional portraits, and screwing the assemblage together again. This example has a linen guard to protect the paper portrait as it is rolled and snapped shut. Leather roll is approx 17 inches wide and two foot long. Portrait in this case is of a distinguished man in a suit, shoulders up. Marked on the rear of this portrait (which is paper laid onto linen) is a stamp "Crayon" and various sizes and costs. Generally good condition, with some soiling to the faux leather, and minor creasing to the portrait. Large photographic prints were expensive and difficult to store and transport. This was one solution for photographers - a sample portrait that could be rolled up in a protective cover and… Read More

[ Newburyport, MA ]: MDTV, 2012. First Edition. Fine. First Edition. Oblong 24 inches by 11 inches (sheet size) with approx 3/4 inch white margins. One of only two copies produced. Printed on archival paper using a large format ink jet printer with pigmented archival inks. Colors bright and vibrant! Between 2009 and 2014 Mark Davis of MDTV produced two documentaries about the Curiosity Rover Mission (aka Mars Science Laboratory). One for National Geographic (MARTIAN MEGA ROVER, aired August 2012) ) and one for The Discovery Channel (RED PLANET ROVER, aired December 2014). While MDTV was gathering primary source material at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a poster project was commissioned by Project Scientist John Grotzinger of Caltech/JPL at the suggestion of JPL engineer Adam Steltzner. Steltzner envisioned the posters as motivational posters to be displayed in the areas where the rovers were being built, much like WWII war effort posters. MDTV agreed to take on the task of design and… Read More

Edinburgh: W. & A. K. Johnston, 1882. First Edition. Cloth. Very Good. First Edition. x, 32 pages + 18 plates (1 colored) and frontis. Square 4to (11 x 11 inches). Publisher's green cloth gilt.. Title page with affixed Woodbury-type from original drawing by C. P. S. Black and white frontis. Bowing of boards at the extremities and light soiling. A nice copy. Cloth. "Charles Piazzi Smyth FRSE FRS FRAS FRSSA (3 January 1819 - 21 February 1900) was an Italian-born British astronomer who was Astronomer Royal for Scotland from 1846 to 1888; he is known for many innovations in astronomy and, along with his wife Jessica Duncan Piazzi Smyth, his pyramidological and metrological studies of the Great Pyramid of Giza... In 1871 and 1872 Smyth investigated the spectra of the aurora, and zodiacal light. He recommended the use of the rain-band for weather forecasting and discovered, in conjunction with Alexander Stewart Herschel, the harmonic relation between the rays emitted by carbon monoxide. In 1877-1878 he… Read More

[no place of publication stated]: [no publisher stated], [no date stated]. Wraps. Good. [1]-5 pages. 10 7/8 x 8 3/8 inches. Typescript on thin typewriter paper typed on recto only. Stapled upper left. Stained. Two penciled corrections in an unknown hand (one typo, one number correction). The typewriter paper is watermarked "75% Cotton Fibre | Old Badger Bond | by Fox River" on several sheets. Wraps. Apparently published only in the Sloane and Wyner bibliography, this paper describes at a high level what THROBAC I is (THROBAC stands for THrifty ROman-numeral BAckward looking Computer) and what it can do. "Throbac...is a relay desk calculator operating entirely in the Roman numeral system. It performs the four operations addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The controls and method of operation are very similar to the Marchant desk calculator." (first paragraph) THROBAC I was constructed and currently resides in the MIT Museum collection. (item 2007.030.011). "Over the years,… Read More

New York City: Bell Telephone Laboratories, [no date stated]. Wraps. Very Good. [1]-5 pages. 10 7/8 x 8 3/8 inches. Typescript carbon on thin paper printed recto only. Paperclip affixed upper left with older rust stains visible. Provided WITH the final paper in offprint form: 90-93 pages. 10 x 7 1/8 inches. Publisher's original printed blue wrappers. Stapled. Wraps. First published in American Mathematical Monthly, Vol 57, (Feb. 1950), pp 90-93. Offered here is an undated typescript carbon of that paper. While we don't understand the mathematics here, one comment is fun: "If we were using this notation, department stores would find it much more difficult to camouflage the price of goods with $.98 labels." The typescript carbon in Shannon's files finishes there. But the final paper [ as offered here ] includes additional material, including a final paragraph explaining one reason for this notation: "Symmetrical notation offers attractive possibilities for general-purpose computing machines of the… Read More

New York: Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc, 1949. First Separate Edition. Wraps. Very Good. First Separate Edition. 1-40 pages. 10 7/8 x 8 3/8 inches (275 x 213 mm) Original wrappers, printed in grey, light blue, and black. Stapled with five holes punched at the spine as issued. Minor creasing and soiling to the covers, some minor spotting internally. Wraps. The Bell System Technical Journal, Vol 28, pp 59-98, January 1949 first published this article. We are not aware of a Bell System Technical Journal offprint for this article. Unless one exists, this Bell Telephone System Monograph issue #B-1672 constitutes the first separate edition. "The Summer of 1940 was spent [ by Shannon ] at Bell Telephone Laboratories doing further research on switching circuits. A new method of design was developed, which greatly reduced the number of contacts needed to synthesize complex switching functions from earlier realizations. This was later published in a paper [ as here ]" Sloane/Wyner p xii. "The theory of… Read More

New York: D. Appleton & Co, 1905. Sixth edition, first state. Cloth. Very Good. Sixth edition, first state. 1 leaf (presentation copy leaf), xvii, [1], 1143 pages. Original (red) cloth. Professionally rebacked with original spine laid down. Original boards preserved with color toning mostly to the rear board to address mild dampstaining. Light marginal dampstaining to the inside lower gutter prelims through pp69, pp 1085-1143, and occasionally otherwise. Occasional smudges/stains not affecting readability as befits a book designed to be used. Blue colored ring stain pp 655-672. The first state of this edition with signed PRESENTATION Leaf. The printed presentation leaf, bound at the very beginning, reads as follows: "Presentation Copy | This is Number 30 [number filled in, in ink] | of the first 105,000 copies printed." INSCRIBED in ink by WILLIAM OSLER "Dr. James Stewart | from | Wm Osler" below the printed presentation notice. Cloth. "Two states of the sixth edition (1905) were produced. The first… Read More