Jérôme de Lalande's copy, with manuscript notes by him and Jean-Baptiste Joseph Delambre

DELISLE, Joseph Nicolas (De L'Isle).

Memoires pour servir a l'histoire & au progres de l'astronomie, de la geographie, & de la physique, recueillis des plusieurs dissertations lües dans les assemblees de l'Academie Roiale des Sciences de Paris, & de celle de St. Petersbourg, qui n'ont point encore ete imprimees. .

St. Petersburg: Academie des Sciences, 1738.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #003862

4to (241 x 178 mm). 284, [12] pp., woodcut initials and text diagrams, 13 folding engraved plates bound at the end. Contemporary polished and mottled calf with cat's paw motif, spine with 5 raised bands richly gilt in compartments, boards ruled in blind, red-dyed edges, marbled endpapers (spine lettering piece gone, old repairs to joints and spine ends, lower corners bumped, head of spine chipped, boards scratched). Text and plates with light even browning and some minor scattered spotting; a few ink marginals in places. Provenance: Jérôme de Lalande (his name stamp and book's content list in his own hand to first flyleaf and a few side notes to text throughout); Charles van Hulthem* (engraved bookplate to front pastedown). Loosely inserted is a receipt dated Febr(?) 3, 1785 with notes about this work written on verso, signed M. Delambre and dated 20 Febr. 1786. ----

VERY RARE FIRST EDITION AND AN INTERESTING ASSOCIATION COPY FROM THE LIBRARY OF FRENCH ASTRONOMER JÉRÔME DE LALANDE WITH MANUSCRIPT NOTES BY JEAN-BAPTISTE DELAMBRE. The book contain meteorological and astronomical observations on aurora borealis, sunspots, the moon and stars, and results of experiments on light and colors and the mercury thermometer. The plates show geometrical and astronomical figures and of a thermometer. "The illustrations contain one showing the author's graduation of the thermometer on quite a novel plan, which however was never adopted to use" (Sotheran 2643).
Our copy contains a highly interesting sheet of a receipt with the handwriting of Jean-Baptiste Joseph Delambre on the reverse, signed and dated 20 Feb. 1786. The handwritten added text of the "Bordereaux" on the front reads: "De laquelle somme je ferai tenir compte à M. Lefevre, par M. Geoffroy Dassy, en me remettant le present / A Paris, le 3 Fbre(?) 1785." At this time Delambre was employed as tutor to the son of Jean-Claude Geoffroy d'Assy (or Dassy), the Director-General of Finance, who facilitated his studies by allowing him to attend the courses of the astronomer Jérôme Lalande, and by setting up an observatory in the attic of his hotel in Assy, which he retained after the death of its owner, who was guillotined in 1794. The position as tutor was ideal for Delambre, as he lived in Geoffroy d'Assy's house and, deciding to accept a much lower salary than that offered by d'Assy, took a small pension and enjoyed living cheaply but learning all he could. Delambre's interests shifted from the study of Greek language and literature to Greek science, and he read widely on the subject. His interest in Greek astronomy soon led him to read up on modern astronomy, and around 1780 he read Lalande's Traité d'astronomie. He began attending Lalande's astronomy lectures at the Collège de France and soon impressed Lalande with his knowledge. In 1783, when Lalande was looking for a new assistant to carry out observations for a new edition of his Traité, he turned to Delambre, who was his best student. Lalande lent Delambre some equipment, and the observational data he collected with it went into the third edition of Lalande's Traité d'astronomie, which appeared in print in 1792.
*Charles Joseph Emmanuel van Hulthem (1764-1832) was a bibliophile from the Low Countries whose collection of books provided the first kernel of the Royal Library of Belgium. During the Belgian Revolution of 1830, his house in Brussels was on the front lines and his considerable collection of books, medals and antiquities was severely damaged. In 1837, the collection of approximately 60,000 manuscripts and printed books that he had left was acquired by the Belgian state for 315,000 francs and formed the basis of the collection of the Royal Library of Belgium (Wikisource).
References: Houzeau-Lancaster 3464; DSB IV, p.25. . . Visit our website for further reading and images!

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