Description

JANVIER (Antide), Des révolutions des corps célestes par le mécanisme des rouages, Paris, Didot l’ainé, 1812.

4°, frontispiece, XII (with half-title repeated after title page), 126, (2) pages and 8 folded plates ; contemporary marbled half-sheepskin (paper repairs to lower extremities ; inside very clean.) 

First edition, first issue, of Antide Janvier’s astronomical clocks.

It does not include the appendix numbered 127-130 « contenant l’extrait d’un Rapport sur un ouvrage de M. Janvier… [d’après] le procés-verbal de la séance du lundi 19 juillet 1813 ». Therefore, it appears that the copy was strictly bound at the time, in 1812. 

The mechanical culmination of astronomical horology by the genius French watchmaker Antide Janvier.

This book represents Janvier’s survey of his life work on the development of clockwork driven planetary machines – the first, separately issued part of his wider project on cosmology and cosmological machines. Based on the description of an unfinished mechanism by Christian Huygens, Janvier designed an orrery showing the motions of Jupiter’s satellites. This orrery is described in the present text, as well as a planisphere depicting the apparent motions of the planets in relation to the Earth, an instrument representing the revolutions of Saturn’s satellites, and the most complete planetary machine ever made up to that time (the famous masterpiece of 1801).

A good copy of this important work of astronomical horology.