CHERUBIN D’ORLÉANS, Père.

A Paris: Chez Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, Imprimeur du Roi…1677

Folio, 13 leaves, 168 pages, 10 leaves, engraved title and 16 engraved plates (4 double-page or folding). Without the final blank preliminary leaf. Engraved vignette on title, in four parts with a fine and large head- and tailpiece for each part, engraved and woodcut initials. Some leaves very lightly browned, several marginal wormholes or tracks. Contemporary mottled calf (nicely rebacked preserving much of the original spine, tips of corners repaired, old scuff mark on upper cover), generally a very good and very large copy. Provenance: Presentation copy from the author, inscribed on the front endpaper “A Monsieur le President Boileve, Donnée par l’Autheur”; bookplate of E.N. da C. Andrade; pencilled marks of E.A. Osborne at Dawsons of Pall Mall; bookplate of David L. DiLaura.

FIRST EDITION, and a presentation copy, of an important and handsomely produced book on binocular vision and optical instruments by one of the outstanding 17th century instrument makers. In his book La Dioptrique Oculaire of 1671, the Capuchin Fr. Cherubin d’Orléans noted the inferiority of monocular vision and refuted the notion that that it is more useful and efficacious to use one eye. In La Vision Parfaite, Cherubin continues to insist that vision is more powerful when both eyes are used and that to this end binocular optical instruments need to permit the visual axes of the two eyes to converge to a single point on the viewed object. The book describes the first binocular microscope which is the principal subject of the book, and gives methods for the design, construction, testing, and use of binocular microscopes, telescopes, ‘binoculars’, and spectacles. DiLaura, Bibliotheca Opticoria, 173. Clay & Court, The history of the microscope, p. 82. King, The history of the telescope, p. 57. Daumas, Scientific instruments, p. 28.

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