ALEMBERT, Jean le Rond d', CONDORCET, Marie Jean Nicolas, Marquis de, & BOSSUT, Charles. Nouvelles Expériences sur la Résistance des Fluides...
Five folding engraved plates. 2 p.l., 232 pp. 8vo, cont. vellum over boards, red morocco lettering piece on spine. Paris: C.A. Jombert, 1777. First edition of this account of a well-known series of experiments on fluid resistance. "In 1775 Bossut, d'Alembert, and the Marquis de Condorcet were charged by the government with a series of texts on the resistance of bodies of various shapes in connection with the expanding system of inland navigation. For this purpose, and largely under Bossut's guidance, a towing tank about 100 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 7 feet deep was provided with a gravity drive, and studies were made on the effect of bow form and relative cross-sectional proportions. The principal conclusion reached was that (as had already been demonstrated in a miniature towing tank by Benjamin Franklin) the resistance increased as the relative area of the channel diminished, and an earlier proposal for the use of underground canals was thereupon dropped."Rouse & Ince, History of Hydraulics, p. 128(with illus.). An unusually fine and attractive copy. Bookplates of "G.P.C.," Fratelli Salimbeni. Ex Bibliotheca Mechanica. Roberts & Trent, Bibliotheca Mechanica, p. 9.
$US2250
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