CAUS, Salomon de

by Salomon de Caus

£15,000 · Offered by Sokol Books

Second edition, enlarged with extra plates, of this beautiful and extravagantly illustrated volume of ingenious hydraulic solutions to engineering problems produced by the Huguenot architect, inventor, garden designer and engineer, Salomon de Caus. The work deals with the physics of movement, with a range of technical applications, encompassing fields as diverse as energy, gardening and music. Book I describes the first machines to be operated by solar power, powered by sunlight striking closed air reservoirs, and one of the earliest uses of steam power. Scholars have proposed that De Caus as an early re-discoverer, or post-Classical inventor, of the principle of steam being used as a propelling force. He was deeply interested in garden design, mechanical fountains and speaking statues, and worked in the service of several great Renaissance princes. His masterpiece was the spectacular garden known as the Hortus Palatinus at Frederick s palace at Heidelberg. He applied himself at an early age to the study of the mathematical sciences, his favourite writers being Archimedes, Euclid, and Vitruvius. After a visit to Italy he came to England as mathematical tutor to Henry, prince of Wales, and in 1612 published a work entitled La Perspective avec la raison des ombres et Miroirs ; in the dedication of this work to that prince, dated at Richmond, 1 Oct. 1611, he states that he has been two or three years in the service of his royal highness. He seems also to have been employed as dr

• Binding: Hardcover

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