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YOUNG, Thomas.
A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts. London: Printed for Joseph Johnson,… . 1807.
2 volumes, 4to, pp. xxiv, (ii) subtitle, 544, 565–796, 43 plates (including 2 brilliantly hand-coloured); xii, (ii) sub-title, 738, 15 plates. Near-contemporary calf, spines with gilt devices in compartments, and red and blue morocco labels, spines slightly faded and a little rubbed on the raised bands, but a fine copy. Gilt device of the Northern Lighthouse Board in top compartments.
FIRST EDITION. Young’s first and most important book, the result of his first professional appointment, to the Royal Institution. It is a course of lectures covering virtually the whole of theoretical science and technology. It includes his completed undulatory theory of light, with a description of his experimental demonstration of interference. In the lecture “On Collision” he was probably the first to use the term “energy”, and in another lecture he defined a “modulus of elasticity” (Young’s modulus). The second volume includes a bibliography of some 20,000 references (which was omitted from the second edition and has never been reprinted), and reprints of his classic papers from the Philosophical Transactions, in which he established the wave theory of light and discovered the principle of light interference, gave the first description of astigmatism, and in general established the principles of physiological optics (see G&M 1486–1488). Parkinson, Breakthroughs, 1807. Roberts & Trent, Bibliotheca Mechanica, 369.
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