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Tag Archives: magnetism

Book of the Week — De Magnete magneticisqve corporibvs et de magna magnete tellure; Physiologia noua, plurimus & orgumentis, & …

20 Tuesday Feb 2018

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Cambridge, De magnete, Earl of Leicester, earth, electricity, England, Francis Bacon, Galileo, geographic poles, Greeks, iron, Isaac Newton, James I, Johannes Kepler, lodestone, London, Lord Burghley, magnet, magnetic lodestone, magnetic poles, magnetism, mariners, navigational tools, P. Short, physician, Queen Elizabeth I, Robert Boyle, Robert Dudley, Royal College of Physicians, Royal Physician, science, William Cecil, William Gilbert, woodcuts


“Non ex libris solum, sed ex rebus ipsis scientiam quaeritis.”

Gvilielmi gilberti colcestrensis, medici londinensis, de magnete magneticisqve corporibvs, et de magno magnete tellure; phsiologia noua, plurimis & argumentis, & experimentis demonstrata
William Gilbert (1540-1603)
Londini: excvdebat P. Short, 1600
First edition
QC751 G44 1600

This the only published work of William Gilbert, an attorney’s son who studied at Cambridge before practising as a physician in London, where he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1573 and its president in 1600. Through his contacts at court, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester; and William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Gilbert was made Royal Physician to Queen Elizabeth I in 1601, an appointment renewed by James I on his accession in 1603. Swank surroundings, but Gilbert earned his reputation from the publication of this book after eighteen years of dedicated labor.

In the six books of De magnete, William Gilbert discussed the history of magnetism. Although the magnetic lodestone had been used by the ancient Greeks, Gilbert argued that the Earth was a natural magnet, and the Earth’s magnetic poles are relatively near the geographic poles. As a result of this argument, mariners were better able to use the lodestone as an effective navigational tool. Considered the first great scientific book published in England, its importance is due to Gilbert’s reliance on experimental methods of research, a crucial development in the field of science.

While Gilbert was chiefly concerned with the properties of magnetism, he also wrote about the attractive effect of electricity. Because of this discussion he is considered the founder of electrical science. The English term “electricity” was not coined until 1646, but, in this book, Gibert wrote “Electrica, qua attrahunt eadem ratione ut electrum.” Gilbert’s experiments proved that the earth’s core is iron, and that the earth rotates daily — some twenty years before Galileo described the same.

De magnete describes Gilbert’s invention of the “Versorium,” the first instrument designed for the study of electric phenomena.

Johannes Kepler, Frances Bacon, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, and Galileo were all greatly influenced by this book.

The text is filled with eighty-eighty woodcuts, four of which are full-page, a folding plate, and decorative initials and head- and tail-pieces. Rare Books copy lacks folding plate.

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Book of the Week — Athanasii Kircheri Societatis Iesu Magnes; sive, de arte magnetica

05 Monday Jun 2017

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animals, arrows, Athanasius Kircher, electromagnetism, Emperor, engravings, F. Valentini, Ferdinando IV, God, Greek, Hapsburg, hydraulics, Jesuit, lodestone, longitude, love, magnet, magnetism, Mars, Martin Martini, medicine, music, plants, rare books, Roman Catholic, symbol, tides, toys, universe, woodcuts, zodiac

QC751-K58-1654-title
““The highest mountain, the oldest books, the strangest people, there you will find the stone.” — Attributed to Athanasius Kircher

Athanasii Kircheri Societatis Iesu Magnes; sive, de arte magnetica
Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680)
Romae: sumptibus Blasii Deuersin, & Zanobii Masotti Bibliopolarum typis Vitalis Mascarditypis V. Mascardi, MDCLIV (1654)
Third and final edition
QC751 K58 1654

Athanasius Kircher learned Greek and Hebrew at the Jesuit school in Fulda. He continued his scientific studies at Paderborn, Cologne, and Koblenz, taking orders in 1628 as a Jesuit priest. He traveled to Paris, fleeing fighting in Germany, and settled in Rome in 1634. His rigorous scientific curiosity was girded by a mystical conception of natural laws and forces. His methodology ranged from scholastic to hands-on experimentation. He once had himself lowered into the crater of Vesuvius to observe its features soon after an eruption. He was a prolific writer, publishing forty-four books. More than 2,000 of his manuscripts and letters survive. He assembled one of the first natural history collections, housed in a museum after his name in Rome, and later dispersed throughout various institutions.

The third edition of Magnes sive de arte magnetica is the first to appear in folio format. It is virtually a new work, rewritten and expanded from the first edition (1641). This edition is Athanasius Kircher’s largest, most complete, and definitive treatise on magnetism and electromagnetism (a term coined by Kircher in this work), which he conceived as a universal force of nature. Kircher compiled measurements of magnetic declination from several places around the world as reported by Jesuit scholars. One of these, Martin Martini, suggested to Kircher the possibility of determining longitudes by the declination of a magnetic needle, a possibility which Kircher then introduced to the scientific community.

In this work Kircher included discussions about the magnetism of the earth and heavenly bodies, the tides, the attraction and repulsion in animals and plants, and the magnetic attraction of music and love. He addressed the practical applications of magnetism in medicine, hydraulics, the construction of scientific instruments, and toys. Above it all, God remained the central magnet of the universe.

QC751-K58-1654-Obelisk
Glass spheres contain wax figures incorporating magnets, which can be affected by the large magnet in the base of the obelisk. On the globes are letters and signs of the Zodiac to which the figures point. By manipulating the handle in front of the table skirt, the operator could rotate the central magnet and cause the figures to answer questions or spell out words. The Greek inscription on the ribbon at the top of the obelisk is the Hermetic axiom, “Nature rejoices in Nature.” — p. 275

Illustrated with thirty-two full-page engraved plates and more than one hundred and fifty ornamental woodcuts throughout the text. Title-page printed in red and black. Rare Books copy has odd little hand-inked drawings by a past owner throughout.

QC751-K58-1654-Portrait
The portrait of Ferdinando IV, reigning Hapsburg Emperor, to whom Magnes sive de arte magnetica is dedicated, contains magnetic needles in the shape of arrows, a lodestone, the eye of God, the orb and cross corresponding to the ancient symbol for Mars, and other, even more esoteric, symbols. This engraving embodies the doctrine of Roman Catholic monarchy as a divine institution, and the emperor and his empire as the microcosmic reflections of God and his universe. Ferdinando IV died the year this edition was published, at the age of 21. — Engraving by F. Valentini

QC751-K58-1654-Sunflower
Sundial in the form of a sunflower — p. 508

QC751-K58-1654-pg593
In southern Italy, most commonly in Apulia, dancing the Tarantella cured the tarantulla bite. — p. 593

Recommended reading:

Glassie, John. A Man of Misconceptions: The Life of an Eccentric in an Age of Change. New York: Riverhead Books, 2013
CT1098 K46 G53 2013, General Collection, L2

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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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