Dictionnaire raisonne de physique .... - BOUND WITH - Observations sur les nouvelles decouvertes Aerostatique ... les Ballons

Paris: Desray, 1790. First Edition.. full contemp. calf.. A very good copy; some chafing to the jts.; minor edge soiling; small paper flaw in the blank margin of one title.. 4to. There are 90 copper eng. plates of all kinds of instruments and devices.

A variant made up from the sheets of the first edition with a cancel title and variant imprint. No doubt the result of unbound sheets being sold around the French trade in the late 18th century. Bound at the end of volume two is the 1784 report of the Montgolfier bros. balloon ascent that achieved an altitude of 6000 feet. This is a separately issued account bearing the imprint of Boucher, Lamy, Paris, 1784. It is 34 pp. (no illus.). Mathurin Jacques Brisson (1723-1806) a zoologist and natural philosopher was the author of Le R gne Animal (1756) and Ornithologie (1760). He was assistant to R. A. F. R amur (1683-1757) and after the latter's death was appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy at Navarre and later at Paris. A highly regarded teacher, his Dictionnaire was designed to be a course of study in the natural sciences. The topics are wide ranging. Horology is covered in several articles including two on automata. He quotes most of the rare 1738 text describing the mechanism of the Fluteur Automate of Jacques de Vaucanson. There are articles on contemporary efforts to solve the longitude problem and an introduction to astronomy. Most of the commonly used scientific instruments are also described. Brisson's most important contribution to the scientific literature was his Poids specifiques des Corps (1787) which provided specific gravity data on a variety of materials. The Dictionnaire includes an abbreviated table of his measurements under the heading pesanteurs specifiques. He describes the standard method to compare equal volumes of solid and pure water to derive their relative densities. He was aware that the same relationship held between various liquids and by extension gases. The practical application of the latter was the aerostat or hot air balloon. See Wolf; Roller & Goodman.