Mémoires sur la Chaleur.

Soft cover. Very Good. Illustrated with several woodcuts. 8vo. Original plain wrappers. A Paris, Firmin-Didot . . . 1804. First Edition. A series of four essays, the first being a historical notice of various experiments on heat, and a sort of scientific autobiography describing his own experiments. The paper is remarkable for its lively description of Rumfords relationships with such contemporaries as Davy, Leslie, Biot, Bertholet, Laplace, Playfair, and De Saussure . . . The second essay is the translation of his Enquiry Concerning the Nature of Heat; while the third, Mémoire sur la Chaleur, is a summary of his research on heat read before the Institut National 25 June 1804. The last, Observations sur les Puits is a translation of a paper presented to the Royal Society in November of 1803, and describes the holes which form in the glaciers at Chamonix during the summer. It is related to his studies on the propagation of heat in fluids from which he concluded that water is not a conductor of heat.Roberts & Trent, Bibliotheca Mechanica, p. 286. Wrappers, soiled and torn at spine, edges of pages curled and darkened, interior clean. Uncut. Unopened. Rare.