Lot 92: JOHANN HEINRICH LAMBERT (1728-1777)

Photometria sive de mensura et gradibus luminis, colorum et umbrae. Augsburg: Christoph Peter Detleffsen for the widow of Eberhard Klett, 1760. 8° (183 x 115 mm). 8 folding engraved plates. (Small dampstain in bottom margin of last few leaves.) Contemporary German pink papered-covered boards, manuscript title-label on spine, edges sprinkled red and blue (sunned, abrasion on spine from label removal, front hinge split but holding). Provenance: Dominican Convent, Augsburg (bookplate) -- small, illegible title stamp.

FIRST EDITION OF THE FOUNDATION FOR THE EXACT MEASUREMENT OF LIGHT. A very good copy in contemporary boards. Lambert's discoveries 'are of fundamental importance in astronomy, photography and visual research generally... Both Kepler and Huygens had investigated the intensity of light, and the first photometer had been constructed by Pierre Bouguer (1698-1758); but the foundation of the science of photometry -- the exact scientific measurement of light -- was laid by Lambert's 'Photometry'... In the Photometria he described his photometer and propounded the law of the absorption of light named after him. He investigated the principles and properties of light, of light passing through transparent media, light reflected from opaque surfaces, physiological optics, the scattering of light passing through transparent media, the comparative luminosity of the heavenly bodies and the relative intensities of coloured lights and shadows' (PMM). RARE. Grolier Science 62; PMM 205; Norman 1269.

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