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MARSTON, William Moulton. The Lie Detector Test.New York : 1938
First edition, presentation copy, inscribed enigmatically on the front free endpaper: "To my good friend and favorite politician (?!?!) with regards William Moulton Marston". The author's research into the link between systolic blood pressure and deception contributed to the invention of the polygraph test. From the Crime Library of Patricia...Learn More
WILKINSON, James Hardy. "An Assessment of the System of Optimum Coding Used on the Pilot Automatic Computing Engine at the National Physical Laboratory."London : 1955
First edition, offprint issue, of this report on improvements in optimum programming made to the Pilot ACE computer, the prototype built from Alan Turing's ACE design. Wilkinson (1919-1986) was Turing's assistant at the National Physical Laboratory and took over the project upon his departure in 1948.
Although only built as a prototype, the...Learn More
COUFFIGNAL, Louis. [Two copies of] Sur l'analyse mécanique. Application aux machines à calculer et aux calculs de la mécanique céleste.Paris : 1938
First editions, the Erwin Tomash Library copies, inscribed by the author on the front free endpapers to the pharmacologist Gabriel Bertrand and the mathematician Émile Borel respectively, "A Monsieur... Membre de l'Institut, hommage respectueux, Louis Couffignal". The copy inscribed to Borel has Tomash's ownership label on the front wrapper...Learn More
SHOVE, George A. Life Under Glass, Containing Suggestions Toward the Formation of Artificial Climates.Boston : 1874
First edition of this early exploration of engineered climate systems. Building on the Victorian fashion for greenhouses and ornamental horticulture, Shove outlines how enclosed environments can be controlled to ensure year-round access to beneficial plants and to support experimental cultivation.
The book is expanded from Shove's article...Learn More
BOWDEN, B. V. (ed.). Faster Than Thought.London : 1953
First edition, in the dust jacket, of "the most widely read early English introduction to electronic computing" (Origins of Cyberspace), a collection of 24 essays by leading experts in the field, including a chapter on computer chess that was one of Alan Turing's final published pieces.
From 1950 to 1953 Bertram Vivian Bowden (1910-1989)...Learn More
MURRAY, Alexander. The True Interest of Great Britain, Ireland, and our Plantations: Or, a Proposal for Making Such a Union between Great Britain and and Ireland, and all our Plantations, as that already made betwixt Scotland and England.London : 1740-41
First editions of the True Interest and Apology, second of the Letter & Remonstrance: together a lavishly illustrated work advocating a system of canals and reservoirs across Scotland, written some 20 years before the great age of British canals.
Alexander Murray (c. 1684-1743) reports on the condensed network he had constructed in his own...Learn More
CHINA; printing. A substantial run of the in-house party news-sheet of the Beijing People's Printing Plant (Beijing renmin yinshua chang).Beijing : 1960
A valuable insight into the workings of a top-tier state printer, combining articles on party-led efforts to boost production - in the spirit of the Great Leap Forward - with performance news, contributions of poetry from members of staff, and broader commentary. Each issue is restricted to internal use only.
Formed in the 1950s from the...Learn More
AIKEN, Howard Hathaway (ed.). Proceedings of a Second Symposium on Large-Scale Digital Calculating Machinery.Cambridge, Massachusetts : 1951
First edition. The symposium was on the application of computing machinery to fields such as economics, physics, aeronautics, and physiology. The Mark III, Aiken's first electronic computer, was unveiled during the first session.
"Notable are the papers presented on memory systems, the beginnings of semi-automatic coding systems, and...Learn More
AIKEN, Howard Hathaway (ed.). Synthesis of Electronic Computing and Control Circuits.Cambridge, Massachusetts : 1951
First edition of this work on the mathematical methodology of the behaviour of electronic circuits. It was based on Aiken's 1947 lecture series, "Organization of Digital Calculating Machinery", and on research stemming from the Computation Laboratory's 1948 contract with the Air Force.
Provenance: with the ownership signature and stamps of...Learn More
HYDRO-ENGINEERING IN CHINA. Guangdong shuili niankan ("Guangdong Hydroengineering Yearbook").Guangzhou : 1947
First edition of this report issued after an April 1947 meeting in Guangzhou of hydro-engineers from across China. Delegates discussed hydroelectric power, flood dykes, and the construction of spillways, all pressing topics during the country's post-war economic reconstruction.
The contents include a series of illustrated technical...Learn More
MICHAELIS, Paul. 25 Jahre Betriebsarzt ("Twenty-Five Years a Company Physician").[Perhaps Bitterfeld : c.1943]
An otherwise untraced memoir by a doctor employed between 1918 and 1943 at the Griesheim-Elektron factory at Bitterfeld, which produced alloys and chemicals. In 1925, the factory was merged by Hermann Schmitz into the notorious IG Farben conglomerate, a core of the Nazi military-industrial complex and a perpetrator of crimes against...Learn More
MÜLLER, Johann Helfrich von. Beschreibung seiner neu erfundenen Rechenmaschine, nach ihrer Gestalt, ihrem Gebrauch und Nutzen. Herausgegeben und mit einer Vorrde begleitet von Ph. E. Klipstein.Frankfurt and Mainz : 1786
First edition of the first published work to describe a difference engine, appearing some 35 years before Babbage independently developed the concept. Hook & Norman place the scarce Beschreibung in their Origins of Cyberspace timeline and describe it as "the first description of the idea for a difference engine" (p. 65).
In the final pages...Learn More
CHINA, river management. Annual reports of the Yangtse River Commission for 1925, 1926, and 1927-8.Beijing & Shanghai : 1925-26-28
First editions of these invaluable technical publications, which record a wealth of data from gauging stations across hundreds of charts and diagrams. The Yangtse River Commission was formed by presidential order in December 1922, and the American engineer George Gottlieb Stroebe (1877-1965) served as the first head of its survey...Learn More
HYDRO-ENGINEERING. Large archive of photographs recording the construction of the Batang Padang hydroelectric scheme in Malaysia.Malaysia : 1964-67
A collection of well-composed photographs likely assembled by one of the project's contractors and here arranged chronologically with expert captions. The albums cover the period from June 1964, when the scheme was in its infancy, to the end of 1967, when construction had mostly finished.
Funded by a loan from the World Bank and involving...Learn More
BOOTH, Andrew Donald & Kathleen Hylda Valerie. Automatic Digital Calculators.London : 1953
First edition, by the programmers of the first assembly language. The Booths were members of the Birkbeck computer group and associates of John von Neumann. They examine the construction of automatic calculators and their historical context, before suggesting possible future applications, including a discussion of machine...Learn More
HARRISON, John. The Principles of Mr. Harrison's Time-Keeper,London : 1767
First edition of the primary account of the invention of the marine chronometer, which revolutionized the science of navigation. "There was no comparable advance in navigational aids until the development of radar in the twentieth century" (Norman).
In 1714, the Board of Longitude offered a reward of £20,000 for a reliable method of...Learn More
ROSS, Sir John. Explanation and Answer to Mr. John Braithwaite's Supplement to Captain Sir John Ross's Narrative of a Second Voyage of a North-West Passage.London : [1835]
First edition, from the travel library of Franklin Brooke-Hitching, with his pencilled initials at the head of the first page. This spirited pamphlet was issued as part of Sir John Ross's very public spat with John Braithwaite over the performance of the boilers on the Arctic exploration ship Victory.
In 1829, Ross (1777-1856) took command...Learn More
FULLER, R. Buckminster. Nine Chains to the Moon.Philadelphia : 1938
First edition, presentation copy, inscribed on the front pastedown, "To Miss Florence A. Sedgwick, very sincerely, R. Buckminster Fuller, Xmas 1938". This book outlines Fuller's technological strategy for maximising the social applications of energy resources and was endorsed to the publishers by Albert Einstein.
The architect and inventor...Learn More
APOLLO PROGRAM. Apollo Lunar Module lithograph signed by all twelve men who have walked on the moon,Bethpage, New York : c.1972
Assembled by Herbert Grossman, Grumman's chief engineer for the Apollo Lunar Module, this spectacular colour lithograph of the module is surrounded by more than 300 signatures including the 12 men who have walked on the Moon, 25 additional Apollo astronauts, various political and aerospace leaders, and numerous Grumman and NASA engineers,...Learn More
CHANNEL TUNNEL. Correspondence with Reference to the Proposed Construction of a Channel Tunnel.London : 1882
First edition of the evidence submitted to the parliamentary select committee inquiring into the viability of continuing the construction of the Channel Tunnel, given its potential military risk.
A channel tunnel was first proposed in 1802, and various other proposals were submitted to the British and French governments in the subsequent...Learn More
