EIFFEL, Gustave Recherches expérimentales sur la résistance de l'air exécutées à la Tour Eiffel. Paris, L.Maretheux 1907. 1st edn.
4to. vi + (ii) + 98pp, 17 litho plates (some double-page), photogravure frontis and 2 un-numbered photogravure plates. Modern cloth. Eiffel's presentation stamp on half-title. Eiffel was one of the foremost pioneers in experimental aerodynamics, establishing the fundamental laws of wind resistance from 1903, when he began his serious free-fall experiments at the Eiffel Tower, the great height of which made it peculiarly well-suited to such studies. The physicists, Cailletet and Colardeau, had been working on free-fall experiments under Eiffel’s auspices from 1892 when he established a laboratory for them on the second stage of the tower. However, this work took on a new dimension from 1903 when Eiffel himself designed and installed there a new and sophisticated apparatus, his “appareils de chute”, which gave results free from the distortions of earlier recording methods. Cailletet and Colardeau had measured the resistance to air of plates but Eiffel now began to look into resistance co-efficients for bodies of other surface dimensions, such as circular discs, rectangles and trellis forms. This is the seminal work on these free-fall experiments, the first stage of Eiffel’s studies into wind resistance. Eiffel describes the progress of the experiments, including those of Cailletet and Colardeau, and gives a detailed account of his innovative apparatus, which allowed for such remarkably accurate results. This is the first edition of the book. A second edition appeared in 1910.
£650
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