Welper Eberhard Elder (1 results)

2 volumes bound as 1. Rare second edition (1st issue, in 2 volumes), extensively revised and enlarged, of a mathematical study of the construction of sundials, by Eberhard Welper the elder (1590-1664), first published in 1625 and here with useful additional observations and enlarged with a second part by Johann Christoph Sturm. Welper was born in Lohr (near Marburg), but studied in Strasbourg where he worked as a bookseller, printer, mathematician, astrologer and astronomer. The first edition of the present work was one of his earliest publications. Sturm greatly expanded Welper's Gnomonica for the 1672 edition, which was originally complete in the present two volumes. In 1681 Sturm added a third volume, so the present two volumes were reissued with the third. Doppelmayer added a fourth volume in 1708.Occasionally browned, but still in good condition. A rare 17th-centry work on sundials.l BMC STC (17th cen.), W815, vols. 1-2; VD17 39:119761M & 39:119760D, vols. 1-2 (6 copies); Zimmer, Astronomische Instrumente, pp. 546 & 583; cf. Zimmer, Astronomischen Literatur 5023 (1625 ed.); not in Honeyman; Poggendorff; Wheeler gift. Contemporary parchment, sewn on 3 supports, with a hollow back, each board with a frame of blind double fillets, green cloth ties. With a finely engraved frontispiece (an architectural gate with a wide variety of sundials and other astronomical instruments), 2 title-pages, each in a decorative frame built up from typographic ornaments, 16 engraved plates (1 folding) in the first part (that for p. 48 repeated - at the end of vol. 2 - in accordance with the instructions to the binder), and numerous mathematical illustrations and figures on 13 folding engraved plates lettered A-N in the second part. Further with letterpress tables on the integral leaves, woodcut tailpieces and decorative gothic initials, and headpieces built up from typographic ornaments. Set in fraktur types with incidental roman and Schwabacher. Pages: [12], 88; 74, [2] pp.