Bidspirit auction | [SCIENCE AND MEDICINE] - Napier’s

[SCIENCE AND MEDICINE] - Napier’s Logarithms: First French Edition (Lyon, 1620) - NAPIER, JOHN. 1550-1617 - Logarithmorum canonis descriptio. Lyon: Barthalemy Vincent, 1620. 3 parts in one volume. 4to (195 x 132 mm), contemporary limp vellum, with manuscript title on spine, light browning as usual for the quality of the paper, some light marginal worming here and there, somewhere affecting but not damaging text. 3 titles, first printed in red and black, woodcut diagrams. FIRST FRENCH EDITION, issue with additional privilege statement on M2 verso dated October 1, 1619. This edition (the second of the ‘Constructio’ and first Continental edition of the ‘Descriptio’) was published together with a small appendix containing annotations by Henry Briggs on base-ten logarithms. Napier, the 8th Laird of Merchiston, entered St. Andrews University at the age of 13, although he did not earn a degree. By occupation he was a landowner, and seems to have spent more of his energy on his devout and nearly militant dedication to Protestantism, treating mathematics as a leisure time activity. Nonetheless, his work led him to the discovery of logarithms, as explained in these two publications, as well as seminal work on spherical trigonometry and the invention of a machine that calculates the products and quotients of numbers using numbered rods known as ”Napier's bones.” Brunet IV:39; See PMM 116 (1614 edition).