Bibliotheca Mechanica

50 black & white illus., including a facsimile of the frontispiece portrait of Sir Isaac Newton taken from the orig. engraving by Vertue for the third edition of the Principia. Large 4to, 424 pp. New York: Jonathan A. Hill, [1991].

Regular edition: limited to 1000 copies, the regular edition is handsomely bound in cloth-backed decorated boards. Also available, 100 copies of a deluxe issue, bound in quarter goatskin by hand and containing a re-strike from the original engraved copper plate of the famous frontispiece of Newton.

The (truncated) Verne L. Roberts collection is devoted to rare and important books in the fields of mechanics, biomechanics, the strength of materials, and the history of technology. This is one of the most remarkable private libraries to be formed in recent decades and the books and manuscripts in this catalogue, including many of the classics of physics, demonstrate the origins of these fields of science and their development through the ensuing three centuries. The roots of these sciences are also illustrated through a number of important 15th and 16th century books.

The catalogue describes approximately 1200 items. The extensive bibliographical and historical descriptions of the books and authors document and define the growth and development of ideas in the history of science and technology. Many of the books are noted for their rarity and have not hitherto been described adequately from a historical or bibliographical point of view. Fully indexed. (Inventory #: 490)