Nollet, Jean Antoine, Abbé. Essai sur l’electricité des corps.

Paris, Freres Guerin, 1746.

8vo. XX, (4), 227, (1) pp. With engraved frontispiece (N. Le Sueur inv. / R. Brunet fec.) and 4 folding engraved plates. Contemporary marbled calf with giltstamped label to gilt spine. Blindstamped cover fillets; leading edges gilt. Edges in red.

 750.00

Rare first edition.

Nollet, the discoverer of diffusion, taught physics at Turin and Paris and instructed the royal children. “Nollet’s repertoire always included electricity [... and he] became the chief of European electricians [...] France had no electrician of stature again before Coulomb” (DSB).

The plates show experiments and the operation of generators. Attractive, almost spotless copy from the library of the American scientist and collector Albert Edgar Lownes (1899-1978; up to 1917: A. E. Löwenstein) with his exlibris on the front pastedown.

References

DSB X, 146-147. Ekelöf 246. Roller-G. II, 248. Wheeler Gift 329. Cf. Poggendorf II, 295 (“1747”). Cf. Ronalds 370 (2nd ed. 1750).

Stock Code: BN#6790 Tags: ,