[Rarebooks] fa: 1693 Athenian Mercury: ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE & WEATHER-GLASSES - ISAAC NEWTON &c.

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other antiquarian science & mathematics, auction ending Sunday, September 29. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.



Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

The Athenian Mercury. Vol. 9, Numb. 14 [AND] Vol. 10, Numb. 19. London: Printed for John Dunton at the Raven in the Poultrey, 1693. Two sheets, folio (32.5 x 19.5 cm.; 12 3/4 x 7 3/4 in.), printed on both sides. Light wear and small pinholes to the left margins; some browning and damp-staining to the edges.

Two separate issues of this popular late seventeenth-century English periodical, the first newspaper to use the question-and-answer format. Half of the first issue and nearly the entirety of the second are devoted to a response and a follow-up to a "Noble Question" posed by a reader, namely: What's the reason of the Mercury's ascending in the Glass Tube always in fair Weather, and descending in rainy Weather? If you can demonstrate it to be some unequal pressure of the Atmosphere, I ask further, How a Column of the Atmosphere can weigh as much thru the Roof of a House, Chambers, and all, as in the open Firmament, when nothing interposes? In their lengthy response, the editors reference such heavyweights as Robert Boyle and "Mr. Newtons Nova Principia Philosophiae Mathematica," published just five years before.