APIANUS, Petrus and Reiner GEMMA FRISIUS. Cosmographia ... Paris, Vivantius Gaultherot, 1551.
[bound with:] NEANDER, Michael. Elementa sphericae doctrinae, seu De primo motu ... Basle, Ioannes Oporinus, 1561.
Two works in one vol., quarto, ff. [2], 74 (including the map); 195, [6]; the Apianus with a large woodcut of an astronomical globe on the title, folding wood-engraved map of the world, four working volvelles (on C2v, D1v, H4r, P3r); many woodcut diagrams (several full-page), maps and illustrations in the text; the Neander with several woodcuts and a folding table; contemporary vellum over boards; rear end-paper with inscription in ink, recording the purchase of the book in Leiden in 1642.
I. A VERY ATTRACTIVE COPY, WITH ALL ITS VOLVELLES PRESENT, of one of the most important geographical and astronomical texts of the Renaissance."During the first half of the sixteenth century Germany was the principal center of both mathematical and descriptive geography ... [The] German school of geographers had its greatest exponents in Peter Apian (1501-52) and Sebastian Münster (1489-1552). Apian was an astronomer and a mathematician; in his Cosmographicus Liber ... subsequently edited by the great Flemish mathematician, Gemma Phrysius, under the simpler title of Cosmographia, he based the whole science on mathematics and measurement, following Ptolemy in making a distinction between geography (the study of the earth as a whole) and chorography (the study of specific areas). His work may best be described as a theoretical textbook; for a hundred years it was a standard source ..." (Penrose, Travel and Discovery in the Renaissance, pp. 308-9).
This was the first work to suggest the use of lunar distances to measure longitude, and was the basis for all mathematical geography for the next 100 years. First published in 1524, it was subsequently translated into many European languages. As modified by the editor Frisius (first, 1529), the work contains the earliest printed description of triangulation, the method for determining the positions of a series of places in relation to one another, thereby allowing the possibility of accurate mapping without calculation. Frisius also added a description of an astronomical ring dial rotatable around a compass: this was a form of "variation" compass which measured the position of the sun by its noon shadow or by equal altitudes, an important advance for determining time of day at sea (see Waters, Art of Navigation, p. 60).
The volvelles demonstrate how to measure the altitude or latitude of the poles; longitude; the meridian; and the time of day according to the season. The important cordiform world map appeared in most editions from 1544. It contains the most influential sixteenth-century representation of the New World. Altogether this is one of the most significant and influential of sixteenth-century instrument books for navigators and travellers.
II. FIRST EDITION of Neander's Elementa. This rare work "... which includes an appendix on calendrical computation, endorsed Melanchthon's rejection of the Copernican view of the universe ..." (DSB).
I. Adams A1281; Alden 551/3; Borba de Moraes I, 41-42 (including the present work for description of America and ascription of its discovery to Vespucci); Horblit, 44; Houzeau and Lancaster, 2392; Sabin 1749; Shirley, The Mapping of the World, 82.
II. Houzeau and Lancaster 2610; Zinner 2263; not in Adams.
£14000
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