WELLS, John [with] BRIGGS, Henry.

£3,750 · Offered by Sokol Books

Rare first edition of this important mathematical work, even rarer as the variant including the volume of Henry Briggs's Table of logarithms. Wells wrote this book on dialling in 1622, when it was read by his friends Briggs and Gunter, who urged him to publish. A preface "To the Lover of the Mathematiques" was contributed by Henry Gellibrand. According to ESTC, this is a "variant" of Wells's work "issued with unsold sheets of logarithmic tables by H. Briggs and A. Vlacq, published at Gouda by P. Rammaseyn, 1626", the title of which is, unusually, present here though slashed for cancellation. John Wells was a London mathematician who specialized in the design of sundials. He was in close touch with the Gresham College mathematicians (Henry Briggs, Edmund Gunter and Henry Gellibrand) who worked with him on the more sophisticated issues that arose in designing accurate sundials, e.g., determining the correction needed due to variation of the compass, etc. In 1622, Wells wrote this book on dialing, which was so well regarded by Briggs and Gunter that they both urged him to publish it. Both men were particularly anxious to see it published because it represented a useful application of their newly calculated logarithmic tables (logs of numbers by Briggs and trigonometric logs by Gunter). Both Gresham professors died before this publication was accomplished, and it was at Henry Gellibrand s urging that Wells finally published this work. Of course it was necessary to have a set of l

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.