[Rarebooks] FS: 1831 Report on Philadelphia Water Power

[Joslin Hall Rare Books, ABAA]

"REPORT ON WATER POWER. Report of the Committee of the Franklin Institute
of Pennsylvania, appointed May, 1829, to ascertain by experiment the value
of Water as a Moving Power"

[Philadelphia: 1831].

The 14 members of the Committee spent about a year and a half designing
and constructing the apparatus to hold the trials, and running the trials,
after which this detailed report, chock full of useful tables, was issued.

As the author notes: "The importance of accurate knowledge in relation to
the effect of water as a moving power and the defective state of
information upon that subject, induced the Franklin Institute, in the
spring of 1829, to determine that a series of experiments should be made,
under its direction, upon a force of water applied by wheels; the
experiments to be in detail, and upon a scale calculated to give
confidence in the practical nature of the results... There is perhaps no
subject connected with the extensive branch of mechanics, for which theory
has done so little, as for that which consider the effect of water upon
wheels; the different theories advanced are at variances with each other,
and with practice, so that the candid theorist confesses that the
circumstances, attending the action, are of so complicated a nature as to
baffle his powers of investigation.  Experiment, then, can alone guide to
results worthy of confidence".

The Franklin Institute was founded in 1824 to encourage the propagation of
scientific and technical knowledge in the spirit of Benjamin Franklin. 
The Institute sponsored a series of industrial exhibitions from 1824 to
1838 and awarded gold, silver, and bronze medals for technological
innovations.

Softcover.  5.5"x8.75", 136 pages, plus 8 engraved plates, three of them
folding.  Bound in new paper covers; text with some spotting and soil,
some plates with some foxing, etc.  [05606]  $750.00

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