Italian descritpion of the Foullon’s holometer with 16 engravings – 1564
€1,400
Circa
1564
Country of manufacture
France
Description
FOULLON (Abel), Descrittione et uso dell’holometro, per saper misurare tutte le cose, Venice, Giordano Ziletti, 1564.
Small 4°, (12)-60 pages ; 18th-century Italian limp vellum.
First Italian edition of the description of the holometer published some years earlier in Paris. It is dedicated to Sforza Pallavicino marchese di Cortemaggiore (1519-1585) and illustrated with 16 copper engravings including 8 full-page, copied from the French original edition of 1555. The original figures were probably designed by Jean Cousin.
Abel Foullon (1513-1563), valet to Henri II, was a mathematician, poet and translator. In 1545, he married Catherine Clouet, the sister of the portraitist François Clouet. He was the inventor of the holometer, a geodesy instrument.
The name of this instrument was crafted by the poet Mellin de Saint Gelais. For this invention, the king granted Foullon a 10-year exclusive monopoly, the first patent in French history.
Mortimer-Harvard, Italian Sixteenth Century Books, 197.
A superb copy.
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Dealer information
Le Zograscope
Established by Alexandre Piffault in 2014 and based in Paris at 5 rue de Condé, 75006, very close to Odéon, Le Zograscope specializes in antique and rare books in Science, Medicine and Technology, and rare antique instruments in the same fields. We have especially a strong interest in early and continental microscopy, early and special mathematical/drawing instruments, medical and surgical instrument, and rare technology.
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