GILBERT, William.

by William Gilbert

£39,500 · Offered by Sokol Books

.A crisp copy, in contemporary English binding, of the first edition of this ground-breaking, illustrated work on magnetism and electricity, by William Gilbert, the Galileo of Magnetism . The first major English scientific treatise based on experimental methods of research. It is with Gilbert that the modern development of electricity and magnetism really starts (PMM). Gilbert (1544-1603) was physician to Elizabeth I and James I, and a natural philosopher. His masterpiece, De magnete was based on experiments he carried out using a model of the earth called terrella , often portrayed in the woodcut diagrams. His use of electricus in the sense of like amber , here referring to its attractive properties, inspired Sir Thomas Browne to coin the term electricity in 1646. The 6 parts are devoted to lodestones (naturally-magnetized minerals, like Gilbert s own terrella ), magnetic movements, direction, variation, declination and the revolution of the Earth intended as a gigantic magnet. The second chapter of Book II is the earliest ever published on electricity (Mottelay, p.83); here Gilbert discusses his experiments on attraction using a rotating needle electroscope, and concludes by theorizing a differentiation between magnetic and electric bodies. The remainder of Book II deals, amongst others, with magnetic axis and poles, the spherical extension of magnetic force, and how it can be determined by mass or quantity. Book III discusses verticity or the force visible when magnetized

• Binding: Hardcover

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