18th century science manuscript.

£3,250 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books

citing newton, harvey, pascal An unusual late 18th century manuscript on classical physics that cites Isaac Newton, Blaise Pascal, William Harvey, Henry Power, and others. The text, approximately 200 pages, presents an ordered and detailed account of a number of related topics: optics; hydrostatics and pneumatics; mechanics including simple machines such as the lever and screw, the behaviour of descending bodies, and pendulums; phosphorus and its chemical transformations; and fortifications and architecture. The notes are dense but generally neat and legible with carefully prepared diagrams, so this seems to be a fair copy rather than a working notebook. Newton is cited in the section on light and colour: 'What Sir I.N. has said by way of [?] in the last edit of his Opticks will appear to be an established truth from most if not all the following examples, some of which he mentions himself". And Harvey in a short section on chemical transformations: "Harvey had (says he) the opportunity as well as the curiosity upon several occasions to examine the weight of [?] when some of them taken up in places very distant from one another...'. The origin of much of the material is unclear, though the long section on hydrostaticks was taken from Hydrostatical and Pneumatical Lectures by Roger Cotes (1682-1716), originally published privately in 1738 and with a second edition at Cambridge in 1747. Cotes was 'probably the most talented British mathematician of the generation after Newton'.

• Binding: Hardcover

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