Beschreibung:

BARLOW, William. A Breife Discovery of the Idle Animadversions of Marke Ridley... upon a Treatise entituled, Magneticall Advertisements. London: Printed by Edward Griffin for Timothy Barlow, 1618.
BARLOW, William. A Breife Discovery of the Idle Animadversions of Marke Ridley... upon a Treatise entituled, Magneticall Advertisements. London: Printed by Edward Griffin for Timothy Barlow, 1618. Small 4 o (175 x 128 mm). Modern morocco by Sangorski and Sutcliffe; cloth slipcase. Provenance : Harrison D. Horblit (bookplate; his sale part I, Sotheby's London, 10 June 1974, lot 84); John F. Fleming (his sale, Christie's New York, 18 November 1988, lot 22). FIRST EDITION. A fine copy of Barlow's rarest work (STC recording ten copies). Barlow, archdeacon of Salisbury, made numerous improvements in the hanging of compasses at sea, discovered the difference between iron and steel for magnetic purposes, and understood the proper way of touching magnetic needles and of piercing and cementing loadstones. This work contains his attack on Mark Ridley for the latter's Magneticall animadversions upon certaine magneticall advertisements (1617), specifying the passages in A short treatise of magneticall Bodies (1613), which Ridley had plagiarized from manuscript copies of Magneticall advertisements (in circulation since 1609), and proudly setting out his own achivements. STC 1443; see Taylor Mathematical Practitioners 129.