VENTURI, Giambatista.

Bologna: Pe’ Fratelli Masi, e Compagno, .1814

Large 4to, 2 leaves (the first blank), pp. xxxii, 246, engraved portrait of Bonaventura Corti by Rocca after Minghetti, and 10 stilted and folding engraved plates. Contemporary red boards, uncut and largely unopened. Upper joint just cracking at ends, a little foxing, but a very good copy.

FIRST EDITION. The history of optics and perspective from ancient times to the time of Huygens. At the beginning is a memoir of Bonaventura Corti (1729–1813), professor of physics in the college of Reggio and Venturi’s teacher, who discovered cyclosis in 1774. His observations were overlooked, however, and the phenomenon was rediscovered by L.C. Treviranus in 1811. The great Italian physicist Venturi here restates the original observations made by his master Corti.

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