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Jean Appier Hanzelet, First Edition (1 results)
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Pont-à-Mousson, Jean et Gaspard Bernard, 1630. 4°, (4), 264 pages ; contemporary brown calf, gilt spine with raised bands, red morocco title label (some light foxing, as often - the work was printed on poor quality paper). Second edition - entirely reworked and illustrated with 29 additional figures - of this famous treatise on military and recreational fireworks. Appier Hanzelet had published the first edition in 1620, in collaboration with the master surgeon François Thybourel, under the title Recueil de plusieurs machines militaires et feux artificiels pour la guerre et la recreation. Ten years later, he republished the book under his sole name, with a different title. The second edition is entirely reworked and expanded, and contains 29 new engravings, in particular one of the most extraordinary fireworks images ever produced, showing a flame-filled ship. The illustrations include a fine architectural title-frontispiece and 130 mid-page or full-page figures, most of them engraved by the author himself : sieges, ballistics, pyrotechnics, bombs, firecrackers, rockets, etc. Among the most noteworthy curiosities are the extension ladder (« l'échelle à coulisse ») (p. 158) and the Organs (« les Orgues »), where one can identify the first idea of the machine gun (p. 208). Alternately printer, engraver and « Maître des feux artificiels » to the Duke of Lorraine, Jean Appier, know as Hanzelet, devised some very curious machines, including a metal cylinder topped with a cone, loaded with ten pounds of slow-burning gunpowder and stabilised in its course by a long wooden rod acting as a rudder (p. 239). This work is mentioned by Wernher von Braun in his History of rocketry and space travel. A fine copy in contemporary binding. Duportal, Catalogue des livres à figures du XVIIe siècle, n° 645 (incorrect collation) ; Duhem, Les Origines du vol à réaction, pl. 7 et 8 ; Cockle, Military books, 937.
