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Animadversions on the first part of the Machina Coelestis of the honourable, learned, and deservedly famous astronomer Johannes Hevelius Consul of Dantzick; together with an explication of some instruments made by Robert Hooke
Animadversions on the first part of the Machina Coelestis of the honourable, learned, and deservedly famous astronomer Johannes Hevelius Consul of Dantzick; together with an explication of some instruments made by Robert Hooke
Animadversions on the first part of the Machina Coelestis of the honourable, learned, and deservedly famous astronomer Johannes Hevelius Consul of Dantzick; together with an explication of some instruments made by Robert Hooke
Animadversions on the first part of the Machina Coelestis of the honourable, learned, and deservedly famous astronomer Johannes Hevelius Consul of Dantzick; together with an explication of some instruments made by Robert Hooke
Animadversions on the first part of the Machina Coelestis of the honourable, learned, and deservedly famous astronomer Johannes Hevelius Consul of Dantzick; together with an explication of some instruments made by Robert Hooke
Animadversions on the first part of the Machina Coelestis of the honourable, learned, and deservedly famous astronomer Johannes Hevelius Consul of Dantzick; together with an explication of some instruments made by Robert Hooke

Animadversions on the first part of the Machina Coelestis of the honourable, learned, and deservedly famous astronomer Johannes Hevelius Consul of Dantzick; together with an explication of some instruments made by Robert Hooke

Author: Robert Hooke (1635-1703)

Year: 1674

Publisher: Printed by T[homas] R[oycroft] for John Martyn

Place: London

Description:

[viii]+78+[2 blank] pages with three folding 3ngraved plates. Quarto (9 1/4" x 7") stab sewn and untrimmed throughout, with deckle edges, mostly unopened housed in custom clamshell box. (Wing H-2611; ESTC R38964) First edition.

Hooke counted devices [described in the present volume] among his greatest mechanical achievements. [...] What distinguished Hooke's instruments, indeed, was the fact that they were 'convenient and manageable,' together with the real advances they made. [...] The most spectacular of Hooke's complex scientific instruments, his equatorial quadrant, is described in detail -- with a glorious illustration -- in his Animadversions (the book in which he publicly attacked Hevelius's rejection of instrumental aids for astronomy.) [...] An equatorial quadrant allows the observer to follow the motion of a heavenly body by pushing his instrument around the axis: 'but Hooke goes further and has a machine do the pushing.'" (Quoted from Lisa Jardine's The Curious Life of Robert Hooke, London: Harper Collins, 2003, page 44ff.)

Robert Hooke was an English polymath who was active as a physicist ("natural philosopher"), astronomer, geologist, meteorologist and architect. He is credited as one of the first scientists to investigate living things at microscopic scale in 1665, using a compound microscope that he designed. Hooke was an impoverished scientific inquirer in young adulthood who went on to become one of the most important scientists of his time. After the Great Fire of London in 1666, Hooke (as a surveyor and architect) attained wealth and esteem by performing more than half of the property line surveys and assisting with the city's rapid reconstruction. Often vilified by writers in the centuries after his death, his reputation was restored at the end of the twentieth century and he has been called "England's Leonardo [da Vinci]". (Wikipedia)

Condition: Final 2 leaves with large sections of loss due to damage (photo facsimile pages provided of these leaves), Edge wear some chipping and loss else a poor but rare item.