[Rarebooks] fa: PHYSICS - 1841 BRIGHTON RAILWAY ACCIDENT & PRINCIPLES OF MOTION/VELOCITY &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.

http://tinyurl.com/m3opbap

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

Rev. J. Power: An Enquiry into the Causes which led to the Fatal Accident on the Brighton Railway (Oct. 2, 1841), in which is developed a Principle of Motion of the greatest importance in guarding against the Disastrous Effects of Collision under whatever circumstances it may occur. 1841. [BOUND WITH:] A general Demonstration of the Principle of Virtual Velocities. 1825. [BOUND WITH:] Joshua King: A new Demonstration of the Parallelogram of Forces. 1823. [BOUND WITH:] George Biddell Airy: On certain Conditions under which a Perpetual Motion is possible. 1829. [Cambridge: Printed at the University Press, 1842, 1827, 1830.] Four separate papers extracted from broken volumes of the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society and bound together in blue french wraps; 4to (28 x 22 cm); p. 301-317, [1]; 273-276; 45-46; 369-372 (28 pp. total).

The first work is in response to a derailment that occurred near Hayward's Heath on the London & Brighton Railway line in October, 1841, barely a week after the line, designed in part by Robert Stephenson and George Rennie, had opened. The accident, by which "four human beings were prematurely hurried into eternity," was later determined to have been caused by "driver error and excessive speed" (30 mph). Joseph Power, the author of this and the second paper, was a mathematician who in 1845 became librarian of Cambridge University. The author of the paper on perpetual motion, George Biddell Airy, was Astronomer Royal and de facto scientific adviser to the British government for decades. Mild toning to the edges of the leaves, a few small light spots, otherwise clean and fresh and firmly bound in modern wraps.