Milestones of Science Books

TATA, Domenico.

Memoria sulla Pioggia di Pietra avvenuta nella Campagna Sanese il di 16. di Giugno di Questo Corrente Anno.

Naples: Presso Aniello Nobile, e Comp. 1794.

1st Edition. Soft cover. Very Good. Item #002919

8vo (198 x 128 mm). [2] 3-74 pp. Modern paper wrappers, pages untrimmed. Text crisp and clean with only very minor occasional faint spotting, original flyleaf with repaired tear in uppr corner, final text leaf little durst-soiled and god-eared at corners. Provenance: Giancarlo Beltrame Library. Near fine copy. ----

RARE FIRST EDITION of the memoir by Abbé Domenico Tata (1723-1800), professor of physics and mathematics in Naples, regarding the dispute over the volcanic or meteoritic origin of the "rain of stones", which happened in 1794 in the area of Siena. "The Siena fall was of key significance in the founding of meteoritics. It was the first in modern times to occur in the vicinity of a European city and to be witnessed by so many people that its authenticity could not be denied ... The two treatises on the fall published in 1794 by the Abbés Soldani and Tata raised discussion of the subject to the level of learned discourse and prompted scholarly inquiry internationally. Sojourners returning from Siena carried their tales and their specimens..., real and bogus, home to England. When Sir William Hamilton's paragraph on the Siena fall appeared in the 1795 February, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, it carried the news to Germany and may have persuaded some of his countrymen that stones do fall from the sky, at least within a few hundred kilometers of active volcanoes." (Ursula B. Marvin, Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni (1756-1827) and the origins of modern meteorite research. In: Meteoritics & Planetary Scienes 31, 1996, p.560). - Visit our website for additional images and information.

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