Books offered by JF Ptak Science Books LLC

Crookes, Sir WIlliam T.  "On the Photographic Spectra of Meteorites". Offprint: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Containing Papers of a Mathematical or Physical Character, Volume 217, pp. 411-430.  1916.  Original wrappers.  Very good copy.  $125

Full text:  http://archive.org/details/philtrans03961425

Review of the work in volume 21 in Science Abstracts:

Grosvenor, D.D and H.O. Hartley.  IBM 650 Program for Linear Programming.  Statistical Laboratory, Iowa Satte University; Ames, Iow:  1960.  11x8.5 inches, 134pp (printed on one side of the sheet, only) offset mimo, staple bound.  Fine condition.  $350  There are no citings for this work in WorldCat/OCLC. 

Notes on this paper as they appear in "Linear Programming on High Speed Computers", Author(s): Rudolf J: Journal of Farm Economics, Vol. 42, No. 5, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of theAmerican Farm Economic Association (Dec., 1960), pp. 1439-1444.

"1. Sorting and selection. This problem has to some degree been alleviated by the new linear programming code for the IBM 650 as developed by Hartley and Grosvenor at Iowa State University. In this program the operator has a choice of allowing the 650 to do an iteration for every positive element appearing in the simplex vector. This produces a larger number of total iterations, but the saving in time afforded by not having to look for the largest in an entire set of vectors can actually reduce the total computation time. Also, this program allows the operator to preselect certain iterations, thereby allowing a human to enter himself into the program. This is, however, done at the beginning of the program and therefore the program need not be interrupted, which, as indicated, loses a great amount of time."

"2. Storage. It is in the storage requirements that a great step forward can be made. It is possible to construct a vector (the "eta vector") of numbers which allows the transition from one iteration to the next by a
matrix vector multiplication. This has been taken advantage of, again in the Hartley-Grosvenor program from Iowa State, to reduce storage requirements. In these programs the original matrix is on cards or tape and only the eta vectors are stored on the drum. Since the size of these vectors corresponds to the number of restrictions in the problem, one can store a large number of vectors, and thereby record a large number of iterations in the storage capacity of most computers. This advantage is somewhat tempered by the fact that the entire matrix must be fed into the machine through an input-output device for every iteration. Since input-output is very often a limiting factor in high speed computers this presents somewhat of a disadvantage. Therefore, this approach may not be very suitable for the very fast, very large computers."

Collection of Fine, Hand-colored 19th c Renaissance Images

Der Truhsaeze von Singenberg Printed ca. 1840-1850.  Hand colored engraving.  Excellent condition. 5" x 7.5" This is a very fine mid-19th century reproduction of an illustration from a German medieval manuscript, The Konstanz-Weingartner Liederhandschrift. The name of this illuminated medieval manuscript is derived from the monastery of St. Martin in Weingarten, near Ravensburg in the south of Germany, which was founded in 1056. The monks acquired the manuscript in 1613, when it was given as a present from the then Schultheiß (mayor) of Konstanz; a rich southern German city near Lake Bodensee. The Weingartner Songbook contains mainly Minnelieder: that is, troubadour songs from the period of 1170 - 1230. It is closely related to the better-known Codex Manesse or Große Heidelberger Liederhandschrift. The Weingartner Songbook, however, is quite small, measuring only 15 cm high by 11.5 cm wide. The Codex Manesse, in comparison, is more than twice the size at 35.5 cm by 25 cm. All illuminations within the Weingartner manuscript can also be found in the Codex Manesse. However, due to the smaller format of the Weingartner codex the illuminations are less detailed and lack the vividness of the Manesse illustrations...

Lee and Wang,  "Question of Parity Conservation in Weak Interactions".  American Physical Society,  1956.  Physical Review 104 (1) October 1, 1956  Original printed wrappers.  Fine condition.  We offer the entire weekly issue in its (SCARCE) original wrappers.

T. D. Lee Columbia University, New York, New York & C. N. Yang Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York: "Question of Parity Conservation in Weak Interactions". Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee were awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize for their work "for their penetrating investigation of the so-called parity laws which has led to important discoveries regarding the elementary particles". The work of Yang and Lee came to destroy the "law of conservation of parity," which had been assumed to be a fundamental law of nature; it predicted that beta particles, which are emitted by a radioactive nucleus, would fly off in any direction, regardless of the spin of the nucleus. In 1957 ("Experimental Test of Parity Conservation in Beta Decay" pr, 4 Feb 1957), using atoms of cobalt-60, W.S. Wu (et alia) showed that beta particles were more likely to be emitted in a particular direction that depended on the spin of the cobalt nuclei. Broken parity (symmetry) essentially means that something virtual (shadowy, but real in a special sense and widely used in physics; it has real physical consequences, since it creates all the forces of nature) has become observable (real in the ordinary everyday sense that it can be detected, measured, observed, and used. "Until 1956 the overwhelming majority of physicist believed that parity conservation is never violated in nature. Any new theory without evidence that went against this ingrained belief would almost certainly be dismissed. The belief in parity conservation was too strong an accepted paradigm to be challenged. Then in 1956 two Chinese physicists Yang and Lee first pointed out the exception and theoretically predicted non-conservation of parity. Initially there was predictable skepticism and it took further convincing work and subsequent experimental verification by a Chinese woman Wu and her colleagues and in 1957 the physicist community abandoned a long held belief in conservation of parity. Yang and Lee were not only vindicated, they received the Nobel Prize in Physics for this intellectual feat."  $1,450.

Thomson,  William.  On a Machine for the Solution of Simultaenous Linear Equations.  London:  Nature Magazine,  1878.  1st edition.  Nature, volume 19  `  Royal 8vo.  Very good condition.  Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) along with his brother James devised this early analogue computation device appearing in the December 19, 1878 issue of the great science journal Nature, occupying pp 161-162, the article being approximately 1000-words. We offer the issue, complete, with the original front wrapper and ads, removed from a larger bound volume. Also in this issue appears an interesting book review (of 3-pages) by James Clerk Maxwell, an article on the microphone by P.G. Tait (Thomson & Tait!), as well as a number of other interesting entries. The whole issue comprises 25pp. An article of the same title appears in the Proceedings of the Royal Society in 1879. James Thomson's article "On an Integrating Machine Having a New Kinemtic Principle" appears two years earlier, 1876, in the same journal.   $450.00

Jevons,  William Stanley.  Sun-spots and Commercial Crises.  London:  Nature,  1879.  1st edition.  In: Nature, a Weekly Illustrated Journal of Science,  Pp 588-590.  Wrappers.  This is the weekly issue for 24 April 1879, and although the Jevons article ccupies only 588-590 it contains some 3000 words. $500

Rare Computer Manual, 1953.

ELECOM 100 Digital Computer Instruction Manual.  NYC:  Underwood Corporation,  1953.  1st edition.  110+ 17pp (appendix)  4to.  Very good condition.  Elecom Computer was bought by Underwood in 1953 (to become its Elecom Division) and produced three of these units (at about $60,000/unit). The Elecom was perhaps the last computer manufactured in the U.S. using vacuum tubes. The Elecom 100 was the first of the Underwood Elecom series, followed by the Elecom 120, 125, 200 and 50 (which for some reason was thus named in 1956). The are *no* listings for this manual in RLIN or OCLC. Rare.  $750

Deming,  W. Edwards and Raymond J. Jensen.  "On a Population Sample for Greece"  1947.  Printed wrappers.  Fine condition.. Offprint: Journal of the American Statistical Association, September 1947, vol 42, pp 357-384. \

This paper describes a landmark effort to ascertain the fairness of the 1946 Greek elections through statistical means (this begun with the "report of the Allied Mission to Observe Greek Elections" US Dept of State, publication 2522, 1946). This is the technical report on the development of the population sample used to determine the fairness of the election, and was one of the first such efforts of its kind.

WITH: Douglas Scates and W. Edwards Deming. "Education in Statistics for Participation in Current Affairs". Offprint: The School Review, vol LVI, May 1948, pp 262-9. Yellow wrappers. Very fine copy. Scates and Deming's paper is an extremely early popular effort treating its subject matter for general consumption, including (1)one of the earliest uses of statistical accounting, quality control (referencing Shewart's work of 1939); (2) Operations Research (developed at the end of WW2 and made available to the public in 1946; (3) Market Research (quoting the Heidingsfield and Blankenship landmark 1947 study); (4) Standard tests; (5) Clinical Psychology; (6), Accuracy of Voting. Also, on 267 we see the "Statistical Pyramid", representing "the human statistical machine", listing the statistical gradations top to bottom regarding the :"difficulty of the statistical enterprise.   $350

"Making Military Drawings While Flying on an Aeroplane: how the sketches were made in mid-air".  London:  Illustrated London News,  1911.  1st edition.  Folio.  Original printed wrappers.  Very good condition.  Very nice copy removed from larger bound volume 

This spectacular drawing is made from the viewpoint of the artist sitting directly behind the pilot of a Wright-style aeroplane. In the foreground we see the lap of the artist and his drawing pad as he sketches the terrain; the pilot's head takes up much of the center of the drawing, and in the background we see the distant horizon. Simply wonderful.   $125

Aero-photography,  "It's First Use under War Conditions--an Aeroplane on Scout Duty".  London:  Illustrated London News,  1911.  1st edition.  April 15, 1911, # 3756  Folio.  Wrappers.  Very good condition.  Slightly ex-library.  Weekly issue, removed from larger bound volume. 

This seems to be the first illustration of photography being used aboard an aeroplane under war (if not "battle") conditions on the frontier between the U.S. and Mexico near Laredo. The first images taken from an aeroplane seem to have done as early as late 1908 aboard a WIlbur Wright powered flight.   $125.00