Milestones of Science Books

LOHRMANN, Wilhelm Gotthelf.

Topographie der sichtbaren Mondoberflaeche. Erste Abteilung. Mit VI Kupfertafeln. Auf Kosten des Verfassers [All published].

Dresden: Johann Friedrich Hartknoch, 1824.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #002610

4to (285 x 244 mm). [12], 110, [2], xviii, [2] pp., including half title, 2 engraved plates and 4 lunar charts. Contemporary half cloth over marbled boards with the original printed wrappers laid down (extremities worn, corners scuffed, spine with traces of former shelf labels, binding soiled). Minor foxing to title-page and text, little marginal browning. A very good and wide-margined copy. ----

Ashworth, The face of the moon, Linda Hall, 15 - Lohrmann was a professional cartographer and surveyor who undertook a lunar map based on his own micrometric measurements. Using a small Fraunhofer refractor, he determined the exact position of a number of control points on the moon, from which the positions of all other lunar features could be determined. He divided his map into 25 sections, and in 1824 he published the first four of these sections, along with an explanation of his methods. Although he worked for sixteen more years, and finished drawing all the sections, Lohrmann never did publish the remainder of the atlas. Fortunately, his great successor Julius Schmidt undertook to have the drawings engraved, and the complete Lohrmann atlas finally saw the light in 1878. - Visit our website to see more images!

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