Planiglobium Coeleste Ac Terestre Platte Stern-und Lander-Kugel

Nurnberg, 1666. * Houzeau & Lancaster 3039; Zimmer 5089 (1628 Strasbourg ed.); Poggendorff 1984. Warner, The Sky Explored, pp. 104-5.. Extremely rare German edition (a Latin edition was published the same year) of Sturm’s enlargement of Habrecht’s famous treatise on the making of celestial and terrestrial globes, published in 1628. The Habrecht family of clock and instrument makers were famous throughout Europe from the last quarter of the sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth century. The author’s father (also called Isaac) was responsible for making the monumental second Strasbourg clock which was one of the mechanical wonders of its time on the Continent. Isaac Habrecht (1589-1633) was a Strasbourg physician, mathematician and maker of globes. He was much influenced by Blaeu and Hondius, and his globes were highly regarded. J. C. Sturm was Habrecht’s student and a scientist of vision. He organized the first scientific academy in Germany, the “Collegium Curiosum sive Experimentale” at Altdorf in 1672, and introduced the first course in experimental physics in a German university. In 1666, he undertook the task of augmenting Habrecht’s original text and adding a number of folding plates. The plates include two handsome polar projections of the world, two polar stereographic celestial charts of the northern and southern constellations and ten folded engravings showing the various parts of his planiglobiums.The fourteen folded engravings, superbly executed by Jacob von der Heyden, were probably intended to be mounted and assembled to form several instruments, each with a revolving plate measuring 27 cm in diameter and a movable pointer. Each was to be supported on an approximately 12-cm base. The work is one of the most beautiful instrument books published in the seventeenth century and certainly one of the rarest, particularly with the full complement of plates. Despite being an obvious Americanum (see pp. 205, 228, 231, and America pictured on one of the maps), it is not in Sabin, JCB, Palmer and other standard bibliographies. Houzeau & Lancaster lists a 1650 edition that is clearly an error, as Sturm would have been 15 years old at the time.OCLC lists Yale for the German and Chicago for the Latin editions.