Search Results: Technology & Engineering from W. C. Baker Rare Books & Ephemera

Philadelphia: Printed for Thomas Dobson [by Archibald Bartram], 1804. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. [13],10-151,[22],152-219 pp. plus 2 folding plates. Antique-style quarter calf and marbled boards, gilt leather label, endpapers refreshed. Minor chips at outer corners of title leaf, professionally repaired. Mild toning throughout, heavy toning at edges of rear endpapers, light offsetting in plates. Very good to near fine. "Said to be the first book on distilling printed in the United States" - Amerine & Borg. The author, Michael August Krafft of Bristol, Pennsylvania, received a fourteen-year-term patent in 1801 for an improvement in stills, around which, he writes in the book's Advertisement, "Many unsuccessful attempts have been made to deprive him of the fruits of six years of sacrifice of property and labor" with "[s]light evasions of form, without a departure from the principle." Krafft's patent beat the attempted evasions, and, by the time of writing, 217 distilleries were legitimately… Read More

[S.l.: s.n., ca. 1850]. 16 pp. plus 11 wood-engraved plates on 10 leaves (2 folding). Original printed self-wrappers. Light wear in outer leaves, half-inch closed tear at head of first leaf near fold, stitching largely absent, some toning. Near fine. Illustrated catalog of the Mechanical Museum of Georges Tietz, who exhibited his collection of automata (and, sometimes, wax anatomical figures) throughout Europe from the 1830s to the 1850s, with a visit to the U.S. in 1846. The catalog describes twenty exhibits of figures and tableaux, from marvels like a mechanical sun and a turbanned prestidigitator to scenes from the Bible, classical antiquity, and modern history like the behading of St. John the Baptist, Androcles and the lion, and the death of Marshal Lannes with Napoleon at the Battle of Aspern-Essling. The great centerpiece of the museum is the Elephant of Henri Martinet, which survives today at Waddeson Manor in Buckinghamshire. OCLC records three copies of a 23-page French edition supplied with… Read More

[S.l.]: Department of Correction of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1929. 10 3/4 inches. 52 pp., containing numerous in-text photographic illustrations. Original printed wrappers, stapled. Wrappers miildly worn and toned, upper-outer corner bumped, else near fine. A 1929 illustrated catalog of goods manufactured by prisoners in Massachusetts for use in public institutions. The catalog opens with a printing of General Laws Chapter 127, Sections 53-60. Section 53 states, "The Commissioner shall, so far as possible, cause such articles and materials as are used in the offices, departments or institutions of the commonwealth and of the several counties, cities and towns to be produced by the labor of prisoners in the institutions named in section fifty-one." The articles and materials listed range from hosiery to children's cribs to manhole covers.