Sopra le macchine-a-vapore

Florence: Magheri, 1816. FIRST EDITION. 8 folding etched plates. Original printed wrappers, spine reinforced. Bookplate and stamp of collector Marcel Bekus, old catalog entry pasted inside front panel. Light foxing, otherwise a good copy. First edition of the earliest Italian book on steam engines. The text recounts the history of steam power and its early adopters, then details the progress of the technology and its applications in navigation and commerce. The author emphasizes the importance of steam travel in Italy’s vast network of waterways for efficient trade routes. He also decries his country’s slow adoption of steam technology and comments on its successful implementation in the rest of Europe and America. The plates illustrate the mechanism of steam engines and two early steamships.
Luigi Serristori (1793-1857) was an Italian economist and mathematician. A Napoleonic sympathizer, he moved to Russia after the fall of the empire and served in the Tsarist army, but later returned to Italy and became an administrator in the court of Leopold II of Tuscany.
Goldsmiths-Kress 21440.7; Barucci-Carpenter, Italian Economic Lit. in the Kren Library II: 821.