Euler, The true principles of gunnery, London, 1777, red morocco gilt

EULER, LEONHARD

The True Principles of Gunnery investigated and explained. Comprehending Translations of Professor Euler's Observations upon the new Principles of Gunnery, published by the late Mr. Benjamin Robins, and that celebrated Author's Discourse upon the Track described by a Body in a resisting Medium... London: J. Nourse, 1777

FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, 4to (284 x 232mm.), translated and edited by Hugh Brown, errata leaf tipped in at the beginning, folding diagram and four folding engraved plates, contemporary red morocco gilt, all edges gilt, covers with "Greek key" borders, spine in six compartments ornately gilt, marbled endpapers, edges of binding slightly rubbed, slightly torn at head and base of spine

[with, loosely inserted:] manuscript summary list of references to gunpowder in the book, 3 pages, probably late-18th century, with a later note initialled "S.P.R."[Rigaud] suggesting that the notes are "probably in the hand writing of Hugh Brown the translator ... senior clerk in ordinary under the Surveyor General of the Ordnance", with a later copy of a letter by Brown also on gunpowder

The English mathematician and military engineer Benjamin Robins (1707-1751) specialised in ballistics and artillery, and published his New Principles of Gunnery in 1742. The great prolific German mathematician and physicist Leonhard Euler (1707-83) admired the work and translated it into German with his own additions as Neue Grundsätze der Artillerie, presenting it to the Berlin Academy in 1745. In turn Euler's version was translated back into English and further expanded by Hugh Brown, as here, adding his own findings.

For another copy, see lot 229.

LITERATURE:

ESTC T99890

PROVENANCE:

Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford, library stamps; S.P. Rigaud, ownership signature dated 16 August 1825