Search Results: Science & Technology from The Manhattan Rare Book Company

Philidelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1845. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. FIRST EDITION, LEONARD GALE'S COPY, of perhaps the most important book documenting the earliest history of telegraphy. Gale's work with Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail was critical to the success of the telegraph. With Gale's ownership signature on title page and front pastedown. On May 24, 1844, Samuel Morse famously sent the world's first telegraphic message: "What Hath God Wrought" from the Rotunda of the United States Capitol Building in Washington, DC to Baltimore, MD. On the other end of this transmission was Alfred Vail, the lesser known, but equally important inventor of the telegraph. Vail's contributions vastly improved upon Morse's design and were critical to the telegraph's success. Published in 1845, one year following the aforementioned successful telegraphic test, Vail's The American Electro Magnetic Telegraph describes in detail the workings of the device and its applications as well as the history of… Read More

Edinburgh and London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1952. 1st Edition. Soft cover. Very Good. FIRST PRINTINGS: THE VERY RARE ORIGINAL OFFPRINT AND THE ORIGINAL ISSUES IN THE RARE WRAPPERS of Schrödinger's consideration of quantum jumps and the future of physics. "Throughout his life, Schrödinger sought to discredit Bohr's concept of quantum jumping. His forceful attacks culminated in the 1952 paper 'Are There Quantum Jumps?' In this paper he also presented some objections against Born's collision treatment and probabilistic interpretation..." Schrödinger also "repeated his old arguments, enveloped in a good deal of rhetoric. Physical science is at present in danger, he argued, of being severed both from its glorious history and from its cultural milieu. Physicists must concern themselves, not only with ingenious theoretical constructs and their agreement with experimental data, but also with the suitability of their concepts to be absorbed into a general spiritual culture of mankind: 'Science is not a… Read More

Turin: Bocca Brothers, 1889. First edition. original wrappers. Fine. EXTREMELY RARE FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS OF PEANO'S MOST IMPORTANT WORK, CONTAINING THE "PEANO AXIOMS" FOR THE NATURAL NUMBERS; OF SEMINAL IMPORTANCE IN MATHEMATICS AND MATHEMATICAL LOGIC. "Peano's most important contribution to the development of the theory and practice of the axiomatic method was his system of axioms for the arithmetic of the natural numbers... On the basis of his axiomatization, Peano constructed the entire theory of natural numbers. In particular, he showed how the elementary theorems of arithmetic can be obtained from his axioms" (Styazhkin, History of Mathematical Logic from Leibniz to Peano, 1969, pp. 278-9). With "the publication of Arithmetices principia, nova methodo exposita, Peano not only improved his logical symbolism but also used his new method to achieve important new results in mathematics; this short booklet contains Peano's first statement of his famous postulates for the natural… Read More

np: np, 1930. First edition. Fine. EINSTEIN ON THE CONCEPT OF PEACE: A POWERFUL AUTOGRAPH STATEMENT IN EXCEPTIONALLY LARGE FORMAT. 
. Translated from the original German: "No person has the moral right to call himself a Christian or Jew so long as he is prepared to engage in systematic murder at the command of an authority, or allow himself to be used in any way in the service of war or the preparation for it." Starting in 1925, the French Academy began sending large (11.5x16.5) sheets to important scientists, writers, and intellectuals asking them to write on the sheet a statement on the concept of peace for possible inclusion in an anthology. (The World League for Peace later released a limited edition of prints from the submissions under the title Pax Mundi: livre d'or de la paix.) This is Einstein's unique manuscript submission. A highly unusual format with exceptionally large Einstein signature (2.25 in / 6 cm) of an important Einstein statement, consistent with his life-long dedication… Read More

np: np, 1983. First edition. custom folder. Very Good. FEYNMAN OFFERS ADVICE AND ENCOURAGEMENT FOR A SCIENTIFIC ENDEAVOR. An exceedingly rare two-page autograph letter from Richard Feynman from 1983, signed once in full cursive, once with a printed last name, once with his initials, and once with a printed "alias" "DR. -". Background: The recipient of the letter - Stephan Arnold Mascari - has provided (in an included letter of provenance) the context of the letter: "Here's the story behind the letter: It was in the middle of 1983 that I decided to give up being a lawyer in Washington, DC, and devote my life to resolving the greatest mystery in science-the nature of the conscious mind. I had been studying the issue since my undergraduate days at Georgetown and became convinced that the mind must have some other basis than the neural machinery of the brain. And several eminent neuroscientists had convincingly argued for a dualistic mind-a soul if you will.  "But I had no illusions about the… Read More

Princeton, NJ: np, 1943. First edition. nb. Fine. EINSTEIN OFFERS STRONG AND PRESCIENT WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT TO THE LEADER OF THE NAACP IN THE FIGHT AGAINST RACIAL SEGREGATION AND DISCRIMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES. Background: Einstein's fight against racial discrimination in the United States: The imperative "to protect the rights of the individual... was Einstein's most fundamental political tenet. Individualism and freedom were necessary for creative art and science to flourish. Personally, politically, and professionally, he was repulsed by any restraints. "That is why he remained outspoken about racial discrimination in America... As a Jew who had grown up in Germany, Einstein was acutely sensitive to such discrimination. 'The more I feel an American, the more this situation pains me,' he wrote in an essay called 'The Negro Question' for the January 1946 issue of Pageant magazine. 'I can escape the feeling of complicity in it only by speaking out.'" (Isaacson, Albert Einstein, 505).… Read More

Princeton: np, 1937. First Edition. Very Good. AN EXTRAORDINARY LETTER BY EINSTEIN TO HIS SON OFFERING LIFE ADVICE AND DISCUSSING FREUD, SHAKESPEARE, AND SCHILLER. Addressed to his son Eduard "Tetel" Einstein and signed "Papa", the letter, written in ink on both sides of one sheet, reads in full (translated from the original German): 

Dear Tetel,

 I hope by now you've received Freud's lectures from Vienna. I've read most of them myself in the past. They really made me admire the Author, but they didn't convince me that his theories were correct. 

I must admit however that, based on my personal experiences, my conviction about those theories is weakening -- I feel now that he was onto something, at least in regards to the main theses. I would have written to you sooner, but work is keeping me very busy. Even though they say that the work of a single person will not have much of an impact in the big picture, it does not diminish the passion in which we pursue our interests, and… Read More

Washington, DC: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1972. FIRST EDITION. ORIGINAL WRAPPERS. Very Good. FIRST EDITION of the landmark paper marking the birth of recombinant DNA technology. Paul Berg was awarded half of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids, with particular regard to recombinant-DNA." "Technical advances have played an important role in the advance of genetic understanding. In 1970, American microbiologists Daniel Nathans and Hamilton Othanel Smith discovered a specialized class of enzymes (called restriction enzymes) that cut DNA at specific nucleotide target sequences. That discovery allowed American biochemist Paul Berg in 1972 to make the first artificial recombinant DNA molecule by isolating DNA molecules from different sources, cutting them, and joining them together in a test tube. These advances allowed individual genes to be cloned (amplified to a high copy number) by splicing them into… Read More

Lancaster PA and New York NY: American Institue of Physics, 1935. 1st Edition. Original wrappers. Fine. FIRST EDITION of the famous "EPR" paper, one of the most discussed and debated papers of modern physics. WITH: Bohr's response. "In the May 15, 1935 issue of Physical Review Albert Einstein co-authored a paper with his two postdoctoral research associates at the Institute for Advanced Study, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen. The article was entitled 'Can Quantum Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?' [...] Generally referred to as EPR, this paper quickly became a centerpiece in debates over the interpretation of quantum theory, debates that continue today. Ranked by impact, EPR is among the top ten of all papers ever published in Physical Review journals." (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Indeed, like the verification of Einstein's earlier prediction of the gravitational deflection of light, EPR even got attention in the popular press. Eleven days before the… Read More

London: John Murray, 1864. First edition. Original wrappers. Very Good. EXCEPTIONALLY SCARCE FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS; PRECEDING THE APPEARANCE IN "PASSAGES FROM THE LIFE OF A PHILOSOPHER". "Lady Lovelace wrote that Babbage hated music. He tolerated its more exquisite forms, but abhorred it as practiced on the street. 'Those whose minds are entirely unoccupied,' he wrote with some seriousness in Observations of Street Nuisances in 1864, 'receive [street music] with satisfaction, as filling up the vacuum of time.' He calculated that 25% of his working power had been destroyed by street nuisances, many of them intentional. Letters to the Times and the eventual enforcement of 'Babbage's Act,' which would squelch street nuisances, made him the target of ridicule. "The public tormented him with an unending parade of fiddlers, Punch-and-Judys, stilt-walkers, fanatic psalmists, and tub-thumpers. Some neighbors hired musicians to play outside his windows. Others willfully annoyed him with… Read More

various: various, 1903. First editions. various. Very Good. A remarkably complete collection of works documenting the history of the theory of communication of information - what 'information' actually is, and what are the theoretical restrictions on the accurate transmission of information from source to receiver.. Note: The numbers in brackets correspond to the titles listed in the accompanying pdf, accessible via the link below the images. The first group of works details the development and proof of what is now called the 'Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem'. If an analog signal (e.g., voice or music) has to be converted to a digital signal, consisting of binary zeros and ones ('bits'), the theorem states that a sample of twice the highest signal frequency rate captures the signal perfectly thereby making it possible to reconstruct the original signal. This theorem laid the foundation for many advances in telecommunications. The first evidence for the sampling theorem was found experimentally by… Read More

Minneapolis: The American Physical Society, 1927. First edition. Original wrappers. Very Good. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS of Davisson and Germer's confirmation of de Broglie's hypothesis that matter has wave-like properties. "A 1927 paper in the Physical Review demonstrated that particles of matter can act like waves, just as light waves sometimes behave like particles. Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, then in New York, found that electrons scatter from a crystal in the same way that x rays do. The work began as a result of a laboratory accident and ultimately earned Davisson a Nobel Prize. "In 1924, Louis de Broglie... proposed that matter, like light, has a dual nature. The next year, graduate student Walter Elsasser of the University of Göttingen in Germany proposed a way to test it: If electrons do have a wave nature, they should, like light, exhibit wave phenomena such as diffraction. In one form of diffraction, a light beam passing through a… Read More

Menasha, Wi: Institute Of Radio Engineers, 1932,, 1932. 1st Edition. Soft cover. Fine. FIRST EDITIONS IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS of Karl Jansky's ground-breaking papers announcing the discovery of radio astronomy, a new science that has become one of the essential methods for making modern astronomical observations. Working at Bell Labs, Jansky "was given the task of investigating factors that could interfere with radio waves used for long-distance communication. He designed a linear directional antenna, which, mounted on wheels from a Model T Ford, could scan the sky. He indentified all the sources of interference, such as thunderstorms, except for one weak emission. This he found to be unconnected with the Sun and in 1931 he discovered that the radio interference came from the stars. Jansky published his findings in the Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers in December 1932 ['Directional Studies of Atmospherics at High Frequencies'], the date that marks precisely the beginnings of radio… Read More

Wakefield, Massachusetts: np, 1888. First edition. Custom box. Very Good. ONE OF THE EARLIEST PHOTOGRAPHS OF LIGHTNING. This striking photograph by Alfred H. Binden (1837 England - 1892 United States) is among one of the earliest photographs of lightning. When Binden captured the image from his home in Wakefield, Massachusetts during a summer storm in 1888, he created a valuable tool for better understanding the natural phenomenon that was often referred to as "electric fluid" in that time. The photograph was a sensation. It was exhibited in newsrooms and bookstores throughout the country where viewers were encouraged to examine its details with a magnifying glass. Contemporary news reports describe it as "a most interesting picture as showing...the [electrical] current has a sinuous or rotary motion, being twisted like a rope or ribbon during its progress to the Earth." Articles about the photograph circulated for the next few years and in 1892 The Boston Herald wrote that Binden's lightning… Read More

New York: np, 1980. First edition. Clamshell box. Fine. EXTREMELY RARE COMPLETE SUITE OF SEVEN LARGE SILVER PRINTS FROM EINSTEIN'S FAMOUS PHOTO SHOOT AT PRINCETON WITH ROMAN VISHNIAC. Each print is signed by Vishniac and dated "At Princeton 1942" in his hand below the image and numbered on the back. "One day [Vishniac] decided to visit Albert Einstein at Princeton to offer greetings from mutual friends in Berlin. Uninvited, he hoped Einstein would pose for a portrait, but Einstein had little interest. Vishniac recalled: It was a singular experience. An idea had suddenly come to him, and the room was filled with the movement of the great man's thought. I waited several minutes, and then when I saw that he did not intend to say anything more to me and that he was off in a world of his own, I started taking pictures. Einstein later admitted that a Vishniac photograph taken that day was his favorite portrait" (Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography). Vishniac provided details about this… Read More

Pesaro: [Camillo Franceshini], 1572. First edition. Very Good. RARE HISTORICALLY-IMPORTANT EDITION OF THE WORLD'S MOST INFLUENTIAL MATHEMATICAL TREATISE: THE FIRST "COMMANDINO" EDITION. Having established himself as a noted scholar, Federico Commandino of Urbino at the behest of his pupil Prince Francesco Maria translated into Latin Euclid's Elements, configuring it into 15 books and adding extensive commentary. A gorgeously printed work, profusely illustrated with 865 in-text diagrams, Commandino's edition, first published in 1572, was "made use of by subsequent editors for centuries" (Thomas-Stanford). EUCLID; COMMANDINO, FEDERICO. Euclidis Elementorum Libri XV. Unà cum Scholijs antiquis. A Federico Commandino Urbinate nuper in Latinum conversi, commentarijsq'ue quibusdam illustrati. Pesaro: [Camillo Franceshini], 1572. First edition. Folio (8.5 x 13 in; 216 x 330 mm); *,**6, A-Z, Aa-Zz, Aaa-Sss4: [12] (title-page, papal authorisation, dedication to Prince Frederico Maria of Urbino, contents),… Read More

Leipzig and Berlin: Teubner, 1913. First edition. Original wrappers. Very Good. FIRST EDITION, COMMERCIAL OFFPRINT ISSUE, of Einstein's breakthrough work on general relativity: the famous "Entwurf" paper. "In this book, Einstein and Grossman investigated curved space and curved time as they relate to a theory of gravity. They presented virtually all the elements of the general theory of relativity with the exception of one striking omission: gravitational field equations that were not generally covariant. Einstein soon reconciled himself to this lack of general covariance through the 'hole argument,' which sought to establish that generally covariant gravitational field equations would be physically uninteresting. Einstein did not adopt the gravitational field equations until late in 1915 in his final formulations of the general theory. Here, Einstein contributed the physics and Grossman the mathematics" (Calaprice, The Einstein Almanac, 40). Weil 59a. Offprint from Zeitschrift für Mathematik… Read More

Paris: Crochard, 1820. First edition. Original wrappers. Fine. ONE OF THE FIRST TRANSLATIONS OF ØRSTED'S FAMOUS AND UNOBTAINABLE LATIN PAMPHLET ON THE DISCOVERY OF ELECTROMAGNETISM, PUBLISHED IN THE FOLLOWING MONTH IN FRANCE, AND IMPORTANT FOR ITS CONNECTION TO AMPÈRE'S EXTENSIONS OF ØRSTED'S RESEARCH ON ELECTROMAGNETIC PHENOMENA. A MAGNIFICENT COPY IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS. In July of 1820 the Danish scientist Hans Christian Ørsted announced his discovery that a magnetized needle could be deflected by an electric current. The discovery created a sensation among European savants, and shortly thereafter Ampère extended Ørsted's work by showing, among other things, that parallel current-carrying wires repelled or attracted one another, depending upon the whether the two currents were in the same or opposite directions. A little over a decade later, Faraday showed that moving magnets could induce an electrical current in nearby conducting wires, and by 1865 Maxwell had developed a complete… Read More

Berlin: Julius Springer, 1933. First edition. original wrappers. Fine. THE FIRST EDITION, IN ITS ORIGINAL WRAPPERS, OF KOLMOGOROV'S FAMOUS PAPER PUTTING PROBABILITY THEORY ON A FIRM AXIOMATIC BASIS. A formal system is a set of precisely-specified definitions, axioms, and rules of inference relating to a particular domain (such as geometry or arithmetic) that allow the rigorous development of theorems within that domain. Such systems replace vague and intuitive conceptions of a domain, or empirical rules of thumb, with rigorous standards of proof. The first formal system to be developed in the West was of course the system set forth in Euclid's Elements (see quotation above). Recognizing in that system, or at least in idealized versions of it, the gold standard of rigor, mathematicians in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries began trying to develop comparable systems outside the domain of geometry. Peano, for example, famously developed an axiomatic basis for natural-number arithmetic,… Read More

Boston, 1847. 1st Edition. Original Wrappers. Very Good. FIRST EDITION, OFFPRINT, of the first announcement of the successful use of anesthesia during surgical operations, one of the greatest discoveries of nineteenth-century medicine. A visitor to Boston, Massachusetts would be well advised to take a stroll to the Ether Dome at Massachusetts General Hospital to see the amphitheater where surgery without pain began. On October 16, 1846, dentist William T.G. Morton publicly performed a painless surgery through the use of general anesthesia, thereby transforming surgical medicine, and marking one of the greatest advances in medicine, one that not only liberated patients from pain, but enabled surgeons to perform more extensive operations. Offered here is the first edition offprint of the first announcement of Morton's seminal achievement as reported by Henry Jacob Bigelow in the November 18, 1846 issue of The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal , Vol. XXXV No. 16, pp. 309-316. Interestingly, the… Read More