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Nouvelles Conjectures sur la Pesanteur. Par M. Varignon de l’Académie Royale des Sciences, & Professeur de Mathematique au College Mazarin.
A 17th-century important, but very rare work on gravity.
Author

Pierre Varignon
PublisherA Paris: Chez Jean Boudot, ruë S. Jacques, à la Fontaine d, 1690
Edition1
Weight270 gram
CF BM STC French, 1601-1700, V106; Graesse VI, 262; De Feller (1850) VIII, 272-3. Not in Brunet, nor Ebert or Backer-Sommervogel (1876 edition). Not in NCC, nor LOC.
Keywords physics, Physik, physica, gravity, weight, zwaartekracht, Newton, calculus, Caen, Bossuet, mechanics, Gravitation: Jesuit
Booknumber 21346
Category's Old & Rare (17th Century)
Mental Sciences (Theology & Religion)
Exact Sciences (Physics)

12-mo (10,5 x 18 cm). Pp (12), 48, 258, (4) + 6 fold. plates. Orig. plain soft blue boards, wanting backstrip. Complete with the 6 fold. copper-engr. plates, 3 engr. text-vignettes, several end-vignettes, cul-de-lampes and decorated woodcut-initials. Title with engr. printer’s mark. Collation (compl): ã6, a-bxij, A-Lxij (leaf Lxij blank). Uncut.

Pierre Varignon ( Caen, 1654 – Paris, 1722) was a priest who worked on graphical statics and mechanics and introduced infinitesimal calculus in France. His main importance lies in the fact that he joined the handful of men that were teaching advanced mathematics at that time. He was one of the first to recognise the value of the calculus and he developed analytic dynamics by adapting Leibniz’ calculus to the inertial mechanics of Newton’s Principia. In 1702 he applied differential calculus to clocks driven by a spring. He was educated at the Jesuit College and the University at Caen and became a priest in 1683. His first important work “Projet d’une nouvelle mécanique” was published in 1687 and owed him his election to the Académie Royale des Sciences in 1688, as well as the first appointment to the newly created professorship of mathematics at the “Collège Mazarin” (his lectures there were posthumously published in 1731 as “Elemens de Mathématique”). In 1704 he became Professor of Mathematics at the Collège Royale. As one of the leading scientists of his time, he was in frequent correspondence with a.o. Leibniz, Bernouilli and Newton and was elected to the Berlin Academy in 1711 and the Royal Society in 1718. In his posthumously published work “Nouvelle Mécanique” (1725) he demonstrated simultaneously with, but independent from, Newton the principle of the parallelogram of forces. In 1710 Varignon discovered an Euclidean geometry-theorem, the so-called Varignon-theorem which says that the midpoints of successive sides of a convex quadrilateral form a parallelogram. Our work on the mechanical explanation of gravity is divided in 4 chapters: I. Conjectures sur la cause de la Pesanteur. II. Conjectures sur ce qui doit diversifier la Pesanteur. III. Conjectures sur ce que la Pesanteur doit donner de vitesse, & d'accélération aux corps qui tombent. IV. Eclaircissement de quelques difficultez qu'on pourroit faire contre les Conjectures précédentes. The 6 copper-engraved folding plates depict diagrams and technical illustrations. With 3 engraved vignettes, the 1st one depicting the weapon of Jacques Benigne Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux and Condom (1627 – 1704, the actual head of the French Church at that time as well as an important theological author and historian), to whom the work is dedicated. The 2nd vignette depicts an experiment on the earth’s gravity by Descartes and Father Mersenne (1588-1648, author of “Mécaniques de Galilée); this 2nd one twice, as well at the beginning of the Discours sur la Pesanteur as at the beginning of the actual work. Very rare. No copy in JAP between 1950 and 2010. A copy was sold at the auction of the Stanitz Collection of Science and Technology (Sotheby New York, April 1984, No 435). . With index and errata-leaf. With the privilege du Roy dated 5. May 1690. Achevé d’imprimer pour la première fois le 31. Juillet 1690. Nice , well preserved copy in its original binding.

Prijs € 4000.00
    








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