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Tag Archives: Edinburgh

Book of the Week — A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism

22 Monday May 2017

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Aberdeen, Albert Einstein, Cambridge, Cavendish Laboratory, Cavendish Professor of Physics, Clarendon Press, Edinburgh, electricity, Galileo, Hawai'i, Henry S. White, James Clerk Maxwell, King's College London, light, magnetism, Marischal College, Mauna Kea Observatory, Newton, Oxford, physics, radio, Richard Feynman, satellite, Saturn, television, Voyager

QC518-M46-vol1-fig1
“The fact that certain bodies, after being rubbed, appear to attract other bodies, was known to the ancients. In modern times, a great variety of other phenomena have been observed, and have been found to be related to these phenomena of attraction.” — James Clerk Maxwell

A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism
James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1873
First edition, first issue
QC518 M46

James Clerk Maxwell was born in Edinburgh. At age 25 he became Professor of Physics at Aberdeen University’s Marischal College, where he began to study the composition of Saturn’s rings. In 1859, he published “On the Stability of Saturn’s Rings.” A century later, the Voyager space probes confirmed many of Clerk Maxwell’s conclusions.

QC518-M46-vol1-fig3

In 1860, Clerk Maxwell moved to King’s College London. In 1871 he returned to Cambridge where he helped establish and design Cavendish Laboratory and became the first Cavendish Professor of Physics. In 1873 he developed his four equations which played a key role in Albert Einstein’s work on his theory of relativity. “The special theory of relativity owes its origins to Maxwell Equations of the electromagnetic field,” wrote Einstein, who later equated Faraday with Galileo and Maxwell with Isaac Newton.

Clerk Maxwell’s work forms the basis of much of modern technology, including radio, television, satellite communications and cell phones. Twentieth century physicist Richard Feynman wrote, “From a long view of the history of mankind — seen from, say, ten thousand years from now — there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell’s discovery of the laws of electrodynamics.”

QC518-M46-vol1-fig7

The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), built in 1987, is in Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii.

QC518-M46-vol1-fig11

QC518-M46-vol1-fig13

Treatise is Clerk Maxwell’s most detailed and comprehensive work, advancing ideas that would become essential for modern physics.

Treatise “extended Maxwell’s ideas beyond the scope of his earlier work in many directions, [demonstrating] the special importance of electricity to physics as a whole. He began the investigation of moving frames of reference, which in Einstein’s hands were to revolutionize physics; gave proofs of the existence of electromagnetic waves that paved the way for Hertz’s discovery of radio waves; worked out connections between the electrical and optical qualities of bodies that would lead to modern solid-state physics; and applied Tait’s quaternion formulae to the field equations, out of which Heaviside and Gibbs would develop vector analysis” (Norman).“Maxwell most clearly prefigures 20th-century physics” (Simmons).

QC518-M46-vol2-fig18

Copies of the first issue have been found both with and without a publisher’s catalog bound in Volume II (the text of which contains an issue point). Rare Books copy bound with catalog in volume 2 and errata in volume 1.

QC518-M46-vol2-fig20

My thanks to Dean Henry S. White for bringing this classic to my attention. ~ LP

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Best Graduation Present Ever

04 Thursday May 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Donations

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Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, bookbinder, chemistry, College of Science Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, conservator, copper engravings, Department of Chemical Engineering and Material Science, Department of Chemistry, Dr. Henry S. White, Edinburgh, French Revolution, history, Journal of American Chemical Society, London, McKnight and Shell Professor of Chemical Engineering, MIT, Nancy Carlson Schrock, nanopores, nonobubbles, Rare Books Department, science, The University of Utah, University of Minnesota, University of Texas, William Creech


ElementsofChemistryTitle

“It is not the history of the science, or of the human mind, that we are to attempt in an elementary treatise. Our only aim should be ease and perspicuity, and with the utmost care to keep every thing out of view which may draw aside the attention of the student. It is a road which we should be continually rendering more smooth, and from which we must endeavour to remove every obstacle which can occasion delay.”
…
“Like three impressions of the same seal, the word ought to produce the idea, and the idea to be a picture of the fact. And, as ideas are preserved and communicated by means of words, it necessarily follows, that we cannot improve the language of any science, without at the same time improving the science itself; neither can we, on the other hand, improve a science, without improving the language or nomenclature which it belongs to.”

– Antoine Laurent Lavoisier from Elements of Chemistry

Elements of Chemistry in a New Systematic Order, Containing All the Modern…
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794)
Edinburgh: Printed for William Creech; and sold in London by G. G. & J. Robinson, and T. Kay, M, DCC, XCIX (1799)
Fourth edition
QD28 L42 1799

Gift of Dr. Henry S. White, Dean, College of Science Distinguished Professor of Chemistry.

When he received his Ph.D in chemistry from the University of Texas, Henry Sheldon White’s mother gave him a copy of the fourth edition of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier’s Elements of Chemistry. The pages of this book were worn and brown with years of use, but it was intact, despite a deteriorated binding. Not a year later, while Dr. White held a postdoctoral appointment at MIT, he spent $105 to have the binding restored. The restoration was done by professional bookbinder and conservator Nancy Carlson Schrock.

The gift and its restoration were so important to Dr. White that he kept the book and the conservator’s invoice for the next thirty-four years. And then, he gave both to the Rare Books Department.

When Dr. White had occasion to hold our first edition of Lavoisier’s Traite, he fondly remembered the best graduation present ever. Dr. White remembered reading Lavoisier’s work like someone might remember holding the hand of one’s first love – a lasting impression, even as life moves on.

He remembered the detailed copper engraved illustrations at the back of the book, made by Lavoisier’s beloved wife, Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier. He lamented the loss of Lavoisier, who nearly survived, but did not, the French Revolution.

Henry White joined the faculty of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota, where he was the McKnight and Shell Professor of Chemical Engineering. In 1993, he moved to the Department of Chemistry at The University of Utah where he is a Distinguished Professor. Prof. White is the Dean of the College of Science at The University of Utah, and previously served as Chair of the Department of Chemistry (2007 – 2013).

Dr. White’s current research interests include high-field transport in nanometer-wide electrochemical cells, DNA structural analyses using protein ion channel recordings, the formation and stability of nanobubbles, and transport phenomena in nanopores.

All of which is and ever shall remain a mystery to me. But I do understand how the newly confirmed Dr. White must have felt when he held this book in his hands, a preserved package of ideas communicated by means of words, at the beginning of a new journey.

Congratulations to The University of Utah’s 2017 graduating class. May you render the road smooth with ease and perspicuity.

~ Luise Poulton, Managing Curator, Rare Books


The Air We Breathe — He named this substance “oxygen”

Traite elementaire de chimie presente dans un…
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794)
Paris: Cuchet, 1789
First edition, second issue
QD28 L4 1789 vols. 1 & 2

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier laid the foundation for modern chemistry by establishing the concept of elements as substances that cannot be further decomposed. He carried out the earliest biochemical experiments and through these explained many of the cyclical processes in animal and vegetable life. One of the most important consequences of Lavoisier’s work was the establishment of the concept of the conservation of matter.

Traite elementaire is presented in the form of a manual. Lavoisier offered a new theory of chemistry treated in a systematic approach unlike anything that had preceded it. He used accurate measurements for chemical research, such as the balance for weight distribution at every chemical change. He reformed chemical nomenclature, assigning every substance a name based upon the elements of which it was composed. He proved that the increase in the weight of metals was due to something taken from the air, and that this effect was constant in all such processes. He named this substance “oxygen.” He concluded that water was a compound of oxygen and hydrogen. He understood that respiration and combustion were similar processes, and, since oxygen was that part of the air that combined with metals in the process of combustion, he named the resulting substances oxides.

Compound bodies were found to present the combined weight of the simple bodies of which they are composed, while, when these simple bodies are withdrawn, they have the same weight as was put in them; i.e. matter remains constant throughout all chemical changes.

The book contains thirteen copperplate illustrations, drawn and engraved by Lavoisier’s wife, a skilled painter who had studied under the artist Louis David.

QD28-L4-1789-v.2-Planche1

QD28-L4-1789-v.2-Planche2

QD28-L4-1789-v.2-Planche11


QD28-L42-1796-title

Elements of Chemistry…Translated from the French by Robert Kerr…
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794)
Edinburgh: Printed for William Creech, 1796
QD28 L42 1796

This Kerr edition of Lavoisier’s work is important for its considerable additions and for an interesting postscript in which Kerr bitterly condemns the execution of Lavoisier. “The Philosophical World has now infinitely to deplore the tragical and untimely death of the great LAVOISIER…If the sanguinary tyranny of the monster Robespierre had committed only that outrage against eternal Justice, a succeeding age of the most perfect government would scarcely have sufficed, To France and to the world, to repair the prodigious injury that loss has produced to chemistry, and to all the sciences and economical arts with which is it connected.” Kerr also alludes in his prefatory remarks to the larger work that Lavoisier was going to write. “Had Lavoisier lived, as expressed in a letter received from him by the Translator, a short while before his massacre, it was his intention to have republished these Elements in an entirely new form, composing a Complete system of Philosophical Chemistry…”

With two folding tables and thirteen folding copper-plates engraved by Lizars after Mme. Lavoisier. Rare Books copy bound in contemporary tree calf, gilt ruled, red morocco label and gilt on spine.

QD28-L42-1796-foldout


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Book of the Week – Martyrs

19 Monday Aug 2013

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Bembo, Bembo italic, Edinburgh, England, Gaelic, Isle of Lewis, Jerusalem, Ken Campbell, Ogma, Oxford, Pictish Ogham, Precentor, psalms, saltire, School of Scottish Studies, Scots, St. Andrews, Stornoway Congregation, Stuart Elliot Rae, Western Isles, Zerkall

Campbell, Martyrs, 1989
Campbell, Martyrs, 1989
Campbell, Martyrs, 1989


Martyrs
Ken Campbell (b. 1939)
Oxford, England: K. Campbell, 1989
N7433.4 C35 M38 1989

https://openbook.lib.utah.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/65/2013/08/06Martyrs.mp3

 

From the artist’s statement: “One day in Edinburgh I happened to pass the School of Scottish Studies. Remembering some music that I had heard twenty years before and wished to trace, I went in. An extremely patient lady told me it was on a record of polyphonic singing called ‘Gaelic Psalms from Lewis…which was first published in 1615. This stunning music gets right to your soul; it’s very upsetting. It is a style of singing that arose because Gaelic populations of the Western Isles had no psalm books in their native tongue. Consequently a form developed whereby the Precentor (or priest) would sing a line, and then the congregation would follow with great passion and devotion but, being Scots, often at their own speed. This action produces great waves of sound that sometimes start before the Precentor has finished ‘singing the line.’ I got a friend of mine, Stuart Elliot Rae, to transcribe the music for me, and translate the Gaelic to match the text with the music that was being sung. Then I put the note being sung at the top of a stave composed of brass rules. Underneath, I put the syllable that was being sung in Gaelic in woodletter, then below that the Pictish Ogham script equivalent, again in brass rule (Ogham is a Celtic script consisting of grouped lines). This looked faintly martial and certainly not Roman. I thought I would show Gaelic as a thing of beauty. The colour in the book was celebratory: it goes from cool to hot, with royal purple and gold and silver. Each new stanza starts with a representation of the saltire, the St Andrew’s cross, printed from a cut zinc solid that just kisses the small wavetops of the Zerkall paper to appear like granite. The notes are represented by Bembo italic capital Os set on their side. These are strung together at the end of the book, to make the chain that went from the tongue of the Celtic god Ogma as language binding all men…I tried to make this book as simple as I could, allowing such typographic skills as I may possess to carry its elements as a chant for the eye and the heart. The English, in progressively diminishing sizes, is at the back. Copy no. 1 of this edition now rests at the Stornoway Congregation on the Isle of Lewis, whose recorded singing inspired its making. The book is dedicated to those Scots who, circa 1800, when they were but 3% of the population of this nation state, nonetheless supplied 38% of its infantry. Text is Psalm 79, verses 3 & 4: “Their blood have they shed like water round about Jerusalem…’ rendered into Gaelic, (sung to the tune ‘Martyrs’). Printed on double leaves in traditional Oriental format. Edition of 40 copies.

alluNeedSingleLine

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