The Fine John Evelyn Copy
Arithmetica Logarithmica sive Logarithmorum Chiliades Triginta, pro numeris naturali serie crescentibus ab unitate ad 20,000 : et a 90,000 ad 100,000. Quorum ope multa persiciuntur Arithmetica problemata et Geometrica.
Woodcut device on title & some woodcut diagrams in the text. 4 p.l., 88, [300] pp. Small folio, cont. reversed calf (upper cover partly stained, lower margin of final leaf cropped & renewed with loss of the catchword), triple ruled border in blind round sides. London: G. Jones, 1624.
First edition; this is the fine and unpressed John Evelyn copy with his pressmark — “Vulcanus 14” — in his hand at the foot of the title-page. The logarithms in this book, “together with those of Adriaan Vlacq, form the basis from which almost all other logarithm tables were produced…In the preface to this work…Briggs coined the terms characteristic and mantissa for the two portions (on either side of the decimal point) of a logarithmic number.”–Tomash & Williams B250.
“Henry Briggs (1556-1631), Gresham professor of geometry (and afterwards Savilian professor at Oxford), published in 1624 the first table of logarithmic sines to the base 10 of our scale of numeration and the logarithms of numbers from 1-20000 and 90000-100000.”–Printing & the Mind of Man, p. 70.
This “work contains a dissertation on the nature and use of logarithms and proposes a scheme for dividing among several hands the calculation of the intermediate numbers from 20,000 to 90,000. Chapters 12 and 13 of the introduction explain the principles of the method of constructing logarithms by interpolation from differences, an interesting forerunner of the Canonotechnia of Roger Cotes.”–D.S.B., II, p. 462.
Fine copy, preserved in a box. Engraved armorial bookplate of Sir Frederick Evelyn Bart., Evelyn’s great-great-grandson, and the modern “JE” bookplate. A few copies have the additional six leaves that were printed in 1628 in Gouda by Rammezeyn for the second edition, published by Vlacq.
Price: $19,500.00
Item ID: 6834
