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SNEL, Willebrord. Tiphys batavus, sive histiodromice, de navium cursibus, et re naval i. Leiden: Elzevier, 1624.
SNEL, Willebrord. Tiphys batavus, sive histiodromice, de navium cursibus, et re naval i. Leiden: Elzevier, 1624. 4 o (194 x 150 mm). Errata leaf. 3 full-page engravings, diagrams in text. (Some pale marginal dampstaining at beginning.) Contemporary vellum; blue quarter morocco slipcase. Provenance : Isaac Vossius, (1618-1689), classical scholar and theologian (printed slip pasted at foot of title: "Ex Bibliotheca Viri. Illust. Isaaci Vossii"; his? marginalia on 4*4r); Robert Honeyman (his sale part VII, Sotheby Parke Bernet, 19 May 1981, lot 2868). FIRST EDITION. Named after the pilot of the mythical ship Argo , Snel's navigational treatise was mainly a study and tabulation of Pedro Nuñez's "rhumb lines," which Snel named "loxodromes." Pedro Nuñez Salaciense (1502-1578) made a significant discovery based on on observations reported to him in 1533 by Admiral Martim Afonso de Sousa. They related to rhumb line sailing and to great circle sailing. He demonstrated for the first time the spiral nature of these lines, which denote the quarters of the wind on navigational charts. Snel's "consideration of a small spherical triangle bounded by a loxodrome, a parallel, and a meridian circle as a plane right triangle foreshadows the differential triangle of Pascal and later mathematicians" ( DSB ). IMPORTANT ASSOCIATION COPY from the library of the author of De motu marium et ventorum (1663). Norman 1964; Willems 224.