Ueber den Ursprung der von Pallas gefundenen und anderer ihr ähnlicher Eisenmassen und über einige damit in Verbindung stehende Naturerscheinungen. [i.e. English: "On the Origin of the Iron Masses Found by Pallas and Others Similar to it, and on Some ... - [FOUNDING METEORITICS] de CHLADNI, ERNST FLORENS FRIEDRICH - 1794

1794. Riga, J.F. Hartknoch, 1794. 4to. Bound uncut in a very nice recent pastiche-binding in brown half calf with elaborately gilt spine and marbled paper covered boards. With occastional light brownspotting throughout. Small hole to magin on p. 27/28, not affecting text. A fine copy. (4), 63 pp. The exceedingly rare first appearance of Chladni's landmark paper in which he for the very first time proposed that meteorites have an extraterrestrial origin, thereby breaking a two thousand year old belief - first claimed by Aristotle, latest by Newton - that except for stars, planets, moons, and comets, space was empty. With the present work, Chladni founded the entire field of meteoritics. "In 1794 the German physicist Ernst Chladni published a small book asserting that masses of iron and of rock actually do fall from the sky, producing fireballs when heated by friction with the air. He concluded that they must be cosmic objects, perhaps debris ejected from planets by explosions or collisions. Reaction to the book ranged from skepticism to ridicule. How could there be rocks in space? Aside from the stars, planets, moons, comets, and perhaps some vapors arising from their atmospheres, everyone knew that space itself was empty. Aristotle and Newton had said so. And yet Chladni was right. Today he is regarded as the founder of meteoritics." (COSMIC HORIZONS: ASTRONOMY AT THE CUTTING EDGE, edited by Steven Soter and Neil deGrasse Tyson) Chladni's interest in meteorites was stimulated in 1793 by a conversation with Georg Lichtenberg, professor of physics at the University of Göttingen. Lichtenberg had witnessed a fireball and thought that such phenomena might be due to cosmic bodies entering the Earth's atmosphere. Chladni began his investigation by searching the literature for eyewitness accounts of fireballs and rocks from the sky. During three weeks in the university library, he compiled what he felt were the most reliable eyewitness reports. The list included twenty-four fireballs and eighteen fallen rocks reported from various countries over many centuries. The similarities of these accounts impressed Chladni, whose legal training had prepared him to evaluate eyewitness testimony. He concluded that the witnesses must have been describing a real physical phenomenon. "When Chladni published his book in 1794, many scientists immediately dismissed the work because it relied on eyewitness accounts. However, events in the next few years swung the weight of opinion in Chladni's favor.Two months after the book was published, a large cloud of smoke appeared in the sky near Siena, Italy and bright red and stones fell to the ground. Some of the stones were recovered and descriptions of the event were published and widely discussed. A year later a 56-pound rock fell in England. Witnesses reported the sound of an explosion from the air. One farmer actually saw the black rock hit the ground only thirty feet away, dousing him in mud." (Parkinson 1794, p. 221).These and similar events convinced Sir Joseph Banks of the Royal Society that an investigation was warranted. He asked Edward Howard, a young chemist, to analyze the chemical composition of the alleged rocks from the sky. Howard read Chladni's book and began acquiring samples of the stones and iron masses. Working with the French mineralogist Jacques-Louis de Bournon, he made the first thorough scientific analysis of meteorites and eventually confirmed Chladni's work and his status as the farther of meteoritics. The work was last offered on auction in 1965.