Exposition raisonnée de la Théorie de l'Électricité et du Magnétisme, d'après les Principes de M....
Four folding engraved plates. xxvii, [5], 238 pp. 8vo, orig. wrappers (dampstain to final eight leaves of preliminary leaves), new paper spine with printed paper label. Paris: la Veuve Desaint, 1787.
First edition of Haüy’s abridgement of Aepinus’s important Tentamen Theoriae Electricitatis et Magnetismi (1759), the first reasoned and productive exposition of electrical phenomena based on action at a distance. Haüy (1743-1822), the distinguished crystallographer, also did important work in physics. “In 1787 he published Exposition raisonnée… In contrast with Aepinus, he refrained from mathematical calculations and added Coulomb’s recent results. Like Franklin and Aepinus, Haüy assumed one hypothetical electric... More