WORCESTER. Edward Somerset, Marquess of.

12mo, 10 leaves, 72 pages, 1 leaf (blank), 5 leaves (index). Without the blank leaves A1 and E6. Title and text within ruled borders. 20th century red morocco by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, gilt edges, bookplate. A very nice copy in a beautiful binding.

FIRST EDITION. Edward Somerset, the second marquess of Worcester, was privately educated, immensely wealthy, and well travelled. In greatly reduced circumstances after the Civil War, he resumed his lifelong interest in experimental science, particularly of a mechanical nature. In 1655 he wrote the present catalogue, describing with the briefest of descriptions one hundred of his inventions. These included a calculating machine, a submarine, a ‘flying man’, a ‘continually-going watch’, improvements to firearms, and many others. “However, it is the 'water commanding engine' (no. 68) which has excited most interest among historians of science, because its inventor claimed to have found a way to 'drive up water by fire' (Dircks, 475). Although the word 'steam' was not used as a term in science or engineering until after Worcester's death, the water commanding engine appears to have been powered by that means, and thus the marquess has been promoted, most vigorously by Dircks, as an inventor of the steam engine… A definitive verdict seems as elusive as ever, but it seems that…steam power was indeed deployed at Vauxhall in a prototype of the water commanding engine, but that it was ultimately unsuccessful” (ODNB). Wing W3532. A few copies have the very rare 34 supplementary pages (i.e. pp. 73–106), but these are not present in the great majority of copies. See Dircks, The life…of the second marquis of Worcester (1865). Roberts & Trent, Bibliotheca mechanica, p. 360.