Tractatus de proportionum instrumento - photo 1
Tractatus de proportionum instrumento - photo 2

Tractatus de proportionum instrumento

Starting price
$ 100
Auction dateClassic
19.10.2023 10:00UTC -04:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
USA, New York
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ID 1032710
Lot 58 | Tractatus de proportionum instrumento
GALILEI, Galileo (1564-1642) and Matthias BERNEGGER (1582-1640). Tractatus de proportionum instrumento. Strasbourg: David Hautt, 1635.

First Latin and first illustrated edition of Galileo’s first publication—describing his ingenious calculating device, second issue, second edition overall. Galileo’s treatise on the Galilean compass first appeared in Italian without illustrations in 1606. Here Matthias Bernegger, a professor of mathematics at Strasbourg and friend of Kepler, has translated the text into Latin and added a section explaining the construction and use of the compass with a large engraved plate. This is the second issue, comprising the original sheets first printed in 1612 with the title and dedication reprinted. It is sometimes wrongly described as a second edition. Bernegger’s contribution “almost doubled the length of the work. These additional notes provided tables of the linear distance from the hinge to the various marks on the sector lines—something that Galileo never published in order to prevent others from making the instrument” (Tomash and Williams).

Galileo’s compass, analogous in some respects to a slide rule but much simpler in operation, was the first mechanical calculating device which could be applied to a variety of complex problems. “No previously known instrument had accomplished anything quite like that ... Something of the importance to society of such an invention as Galileo’s can be grasped from the modern introduction of the pocket electronic computer” (Drake). Carli and Favaro 147; Tomash and Williams G18. See Stillman Drake, Galileo Galilei: Operations of the Geometric and Military Compass (1978).

Quarto (188 x 140mm). Woodcut compass on title, diagrams in text, large folding plate of compass (some stains, uneven browning worse at end including plate, plate with a few short closed tears at folds). Contemporary limp vellum with title in ink on spine (spine with a few chips, closed tear to front cover).
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
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