Beschreibung:

AMPÉRE, André Marie (1775-1836). Mémoires sur l'action mutuelle de deux courans électriques, sur celle qui existe entre un courant électrique et un aimant ou le globe terrestre, et celle de deux aimans l'un sur l'autre . [Paris: Crochard, 1822?]. Second (?) collected edition, presentation copy, of the first paper on the nature of electric current by the founder of electrodynamics. The bibliography of Ampére's writings is extremely complex and remains to be studied: he published ‘his researches in a bewildering array of journal articles, offprints, and revisions of earlier works […] it often happened that he would publish a paper in a journal one week (usually the Annales de chimie et de physique ), only to find the next week that he had thought of several new ideas that he felt ought to be incorporated into the paper. Since he could not change the original, he would add the revisions to the separately published reprints of the paper and even modify the revised versions later if he felt it necessary: some "reprints" of Ampére's articles exist in as many as five different versions.’ (Norman). From 1821 through 1823, Ampére apparently published several collections of his memoirs on electrodynamics under the same general title Memoires sur l'action mutuelle de deux courans electriques , but with varying contents. The present work opens with the ‘Premier Memoire’ (from the same setting of type as the first edition), followed by Ampére's ‘Additions au memoire precedent’. Cf. Norman 43 and 44. Octavo (219 x 133mm). 5 engraved plates (a few faint scattered spots). Original pink wrappers, uncut (lacking backstrip, one cord partly broken with a few leaves just holding, slightly darkened, chip to corner of upper cover); modern cloth box. Provenance : Société Philotechnique d'Ostende (presentation inscription from the author).