signed first edition
1778 · Leipzig:
by KLUGEL, Georg Simon (1739-1812).
Leipzig:: Johann Friederich Junius, 1778., 1778. 2 parts in 1 vol. Sm. 4to. [xxiv], 303, [1] pp. Title vignette, 4 folding engraved plates (with 32 figs.), head and tail-pieces. Dedicated to Leonhard Euler (1707-1783). Modern half brown morocco, marbled boards, morocco corners, raised bands, gilt-stamped spine with ornaments and title within compartments, original 18th century marbled endleaves preserved. Title page signed by J. G. Kohler; bookplate of Ing. Dr. Edmund Neusser. Lovely copy. First edition. Klugel based his writings on that of Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) (to whom the book is dedicated) dedicated and his famous work on optics. In his parts VII and VIII he deals with the telescope and especially the microscope. / Euler's own work on the theory of the achromatic microscope was written as early as 1762 and 1771, when he dealt with the subject more fully. In 1774, Euler's pupil and friend, Nicolas Fuss, wrote a little book on how to construct an achromatic microscope. Klugel translated that work in 1778 and then followed that with this more thorough treatment, being his Analytische Dioptrik [also 1778]. Due to the crudeness of design of the objective made in 1791by Francois Beeldsnyder (1755-1808), a colonel in the Amsterdam cavalry, Mayall asserts (and others uphold this view) that he feels the discussion of the dates of origin or this instrument are at best unclear. – Mayall. See also: S. Bradbury, The Evolution of the Microscope, pp. 179-180. / GEORG SIMON KLUGEL (1739-1812), German mathematician and physicist, born in Hamburg, studied under Abraham Kastner (1719-1800) ["the best teacher of mathematics in Germany" – Vincenzo De Risi, Gerolamo Saccheri (1667-1733), Euclid Vindicated from Every Blemish: Edited and Annotated . . . (2014), p.52] at the University of Gottingen. He was appointed professor of mathematics at the University of Helmstedt and then was chair of mathematics and physics at the University of Halle. In this compendious work he corrected some of Euler's results and expanded with his own findings. In 1803-31 he published his famous dictionary of mathematics, Mathematisches Worterbuch (5 vols.). PROVENANCE [2]: [1] Johann Gottfried Kohler (1745-1801), German astronomer, known for discovering a number of nebulae, star clusters and galaxies. He was a colleague of Johann Elert Bode, another German astronomer of importance. In 1785 Kohler was appointed jointly director of the Dresden Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon and the Kunstkammer. His catalogue of nebulae was published in 1780. He wrote a number of astronomical papers in German, and the following in the Philosophical Translations, "Observations on the transit of Mercury 1786, May 4, at Dresden", [1787]. See: Hockey, Thomas, The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, 2009; Poggendorff, pp. 1290-1. [2] Ing. Dr. Edmund Neusser (1852-1912), born in Krakow, was appointed in 1893 a full professor and director of medicine in the University of Vienna. A highly respected clinician, he specialized in disorders of the blood and wrote about the circulatory system, liver and adrenal glands. See: Austrian Biographical Encyclopaedia. DSB VII, pp. 404-05; Poggendorff I, 1277; John Mayall, Cantor Lectures on the Microscope, p. 61. See: Dieter Gerlach, Geschichte der Mikroskopie, (2009), p. 200.
(Inventory #: S14188)