JF Ptak Science Books // Blog Bookstore

A Map of the "White Mountain" of the Himalaya, 1821

JF Ptak Science Books 

"H.T. Colebrooke. "On the Height of the Dhawalagiri, the White Mountain of the Himalaya", pp 240-9, with an accompanying map, (9x7", "Reduced Copy of a Part of Captain B. Blake's Survey of the Province of Goorukpoot during 1812, 13, 14, & 1815 including the Positiion of the Mountain Dhawalagiri and four other very remarkable peaks of the Himalaya Range" , in The Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature, and the Arts, edited at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, published by John Murray for the Royal Institution, London, 1821 volume XI,  pp.240-9,  contained in the volume of 431pp, with 6 plates, including three folding (including two maps).  Bound in half-calf with calf tips, and marbled boards.  $250   Condition: nice copy, though the spine is somewhat scuffed.  Good copy.  

"The Dhaulagiri massif in Nepal extends 120 km (70 mi) from the Kaligandaki River west to the Bheri. This massif is bounded on the north and southwest by tributaries of the Bheri River and on the southeast by Myagdi Khola. Dhaulagiri I is the seventh highest mountain in the world at 8,167 metres (26,795 ft) above sea level. It was first climbed on May 13, 1960 by a Swiss/Austrian/Nepali expedition.”--Wiki

• James D. Maycock, Geological Description of Barbadoes, pp 10-20. With a colored map.
• Captian Veetch, "Account of the Remains of a Mammoth", pp 20-26, with an engraved plate.
• Analysis of A System of Chemistry, by Thomas Thomson, a very long review from pp 119-172. 
• William Olbers, "An Essay on the easiest and most convenient Method of calculating the Orbit of a Comet from Observations", pp 177-182.
• M. Biot, "On the Magnetism impressed on Metals by Electricity in Motion", pp 281-290.
• J.F. Daniell,  "On a New Pyrometer", pp 309-320.

 

 

Magnificent Map of Gettysburg--40 Square Feet, 1925-7

JF Ptak Science Books

A Map of Gettysburg and Antietam.  From: The Military Engineer, the jorunal of the Society of Military Engineers, published at the Mills Building, Washington, D.C., 1925-1927. 

[Detail of Emmitsburg, about six miles southwest of Gettysburg]

This is a massive map of Gettysburg, in 12 colorful sections, published 1925-1927 in issues of the Military Engineer, printed by the War Department Corps of Engineers, with the map measures about 40 square feet--it is a superb wall map for "historians and war games" (according to the journal). The maps are printed in color, include contour lines and all manner of human geography, in very high detail, including individual houses.  

[Detail from the Gettysburg sheets]

The map is in 12 section on 8 separate sheets, with the bottom two thirds of the 3 section x 4 section grid being two maps on one sheet.  Each map section print-line runs 23x17" (excluding margins etc.), the whole measuring about 70"x 68". All together, the map covers a piece of ground 23 x 23 miles, with 3" equal to about 1 miles (scale 1/21120).

This is simply a terrific map. 

[Detail from the Gettysburg sheets]

Condition: I'd say this was overall in Very Good condition, though the maps are clean, very bright, and very crisp--I doubt that they were opened very much at all (judging by the difficulty in opening them now). The major detriments are the occasional tears in the sheet folds. Currently they are folded, as issued, though I'm very tempted to open, flatten, and repair them so that they are ready to hang.  $750

A Map of the Highest Heights--the Himalayas, 1819

JF Ptak Science Books   

Offered below is a highly interesting and diverse volume of  The Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature, and the Arts, edited at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, published by John Murray for the Royal Institution, London, 1819; volume VI; illustrated with three engraved plates and a folding map; contained in the volume of iv, 402.  Bound in half-calf with calf tips, and marbled boards. Nice copy. $350

• "Height of the Himalaya Mountains (pp 51-75), signed “H.T.C.” with a 12x9” folding map.

This is a wonderful story on the early mapping of the Himalayas, including teh work of Capt. WIlliam Webb, who identified the highest mountain peak in the world in 1817.  The map that accompanies the article is mostly blank, with teh exceptions of rivers, a few establishments, and a series of peaks ennumerated with Roman numerals. In this case, the peak XIV is identified, rising to 25,643 feet. It is today known as Nanda Devi, located approximately at 79.30 E. Long and 30.30 N Lat.  The peak today is the second highest in India and 23rd highest in the world.

“A list of many lofty peaks of the Himalaya mountains, measured by him, has appeared in divers publications. It agrees, so far as it goes, with the ampler information contained in a Memoir of his survey officially furnished by him. The Memoir, which bears date 30th Nov. 1817, supplies further measurements of more than two hundred elevated positions, geometrically taken for inaccessible heights -. either barometrically or geometrically, for accessible stations - and in
both methods, for twenty of those stations. It explains the mode in which the whole survey has been conducted, and these measurements executed...”

“ From 1816-1820, William Web spent five lonely years surveying Kumaun (he determined the height of Peak XIV or Nanda Devi as 25,669 feet, just 24 feet higher than today's measurement)..”.--https://www.himalayanclub.org/hj/65/3/the-great-game-of-mapping-the-himalaya/

And this: “so far as our knowledge extends, the highest mountain in the world.” Its local name was Nanda Devi and for the next 30 years, while expeditions into the central Himalayas from Tibet and Nepal remained impossible, Nanda Devi reigned supreme as the world’s highest mountain (its height is now established at 25,645 feet/7817 m)--http://imagingeverest.rgs.org/concepts/imaging_everest/-288.html

Other noteworthy articles include

• "On M. Stromeyer's new Metal, Cadmium. In a Letter from J. G. Children, Esq. to the Editor. . ." (On the essential element, Cadmium.)
• "An Hypothesis to account for the variable Depth of the Ocean." A terrific piece of thinking on measuring the semi-immeasurable in 1818. 
• "Pitcairn's Island. From the Voyages and Travels of Amaso Delano. Boston, 1817."
• "An Account of some Experiments made on the Body of a Criminal immediately after Execution, with Physiological and Practional Observations." by Andrew Ure, M. D.  Again, another endlessly interesting article....

A Map of Japan's Future Military Conquests, 1933

JF Ptak Science Books  

I do not unfortunately have much information on this very interesting (and to me unexpected) map, nor do I know very much about the history of Japanese militarism and planning 1925-1935--I do though want to at least post/share it for interested parties.

• "A Plan of Japan's Proposed Military and Naval Conquest as Revealed in the Strategic Map", published by the Chinese National Salvation Publicity Bureau, ca. 1933 (but not later).  12x9", 4pp.  There is a tear in the pamphlet along the old horizontal fold that goes halfway across the document, though with no loss of text.  Rare.  $on hold

A Plan of Japan's Proposed Military and Naval Conquest as Revealed in the Strategic Map appears no later than 1933. The single-sheet folded pamphlet contains two pages of text along with the middle two sheets of the map, "Japan's Aim to Dominate the Far East and Pacific Islands". The document was part of a very large collection I bought of the Library of Congress, and according to the pencil notes on the pamphlet it was sent to the L.C. by the "Kuo Min Tang" on May 13, 1933.  (It was curious to see the KMT referred to as though it was someone's name, rather than a political party begun in the People's Republic of China in 1894.)

This is a piece of anti-Japanese propaganda coming from the KMT, and it is published by the Chinese National Salvation Publicity Bureau (844 Stockton Street, which looks today like it is the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall) in San Francisco,  After all, the Japanese had been savaging around in China on and off since the First Sino-Japanese War at the end of the century, and then again heating things up in the early 'thirties with the Japanese-instigated the Shanghai War and the invasion of Manchuria--the Chinese no doubt were seeking allies wherever they could them.  

There are a lot of lines of conquest on this map, encompassing nearly all of South East Asia.  The largest sphere of "influence" extends all the way to the Hawaiian Islands, where the Japanese would take the islands by a "naval battle" with the U.S.  

I've checked WorldCat for other copies and found only one mention--same thing for the internet.  

 

Full text follows:

 

Fine Display of Geographic Data, 1851

JF Ptak Science Books   

• "Der Erdkorper in seiner Gestaltung. Erdansichten. Entworfen von Tr. Bromme. Ausgefuhrt v. E. Winckelmann", published in Stuttgart, by Verlag von Krais & Hoffman.  This map appeared in  the atlas of Alexander von Humboldt's Kosmos, 1851.  8.5x11.5" image on 11x13" sheet, with original hand coloring. Small circular rubberstamp at bottom right corner from previous institutional owner.  Nice copy.  $135

 

Before the Neil deGrasse Tyson version and update of Carl Sagan's landmark television series, Cosmos, there was Alexander von Humboldt, and his enormously influential book of the same title, printed in 1845-1862.  Well, von Humboldt's (1769-1859) book was actually Kosmos when published in German, which is where it started its life (and which von Humboldt suffered mightily for in it English translation).  Von Humboldt was enormously studied and educated and of a high scientific mind over many subjects, one of those 19th century figures who seemed as though they could know everything, a polymath of high order (along the lines of Goethe and von Helmholtz and Thomas Young and others).  He was a meteorologist and biogeographer before those sciences existed; a naturalist, geographer, archaeologist, and explorer, a natural philosopher of magnitudes.

Kosmos reflected his lifelong interest in order, and what he did was astonishing--he attempted to unifying the complexities of nature in one book (of five volumes), binding the various branches of science together in a cohesive whole, attempting to show how the laws of the universe acted here on Earth.  It was a very influential work, very progressive, a masterwork of scientific method.  

Sagan (and Tyson, soon) tried to explain what the universe was all about; 160+ years ago, so did von Humboldt, and for his time he came damned close to doing so, or as close as anyone could possibly come. 

The fine little inset above (1x1.5 inches in real life) is an excellent display of water/land mass of the Earth, and is but one of eleven such images on this beautiful image (which appears in full, below): 

The Not-so-Sunny Aspect of Easter Island

JF Ptak Science Books 

• La Perouse, "Inhabitants and Monuments of Easter Island", London, 1798. 14x9".  Original engraving.  SOLD

The "Easter" part of Easter Island is fairly ironic--new, rising, hopeful connotations packing something not-so-joyful.  I was looking at this engraving from the bookstore, an image from a famous exploration journal of  Captain Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse, showing a landing party and very western-looking Polynesians. La Perouse was off on a journey that would take him along the trail of Captain Cook, a scientific/ethnographic/cartographic expedition (along with the appropriate trailing or leading religious/economic benefits of such a thing) that landed him on the island 9 August 1786.  He left Brest on 1 August the previous year, and he would venture round-the-world, or almost, as he would never make it home, disappearing along the northwest coast of North America in 1789.  His journals did complete the voyage, however, being taken back to France by a British ship in Australia.

The island is so-named because it was first recorded by a European, Captain Jacob Roggoveen, Easter 5 April, 1722. La Perouse was there 64 years later, when things were already quite heated, in a most unfortunate way, for the two clans who shared the island, each already suffering substantial losses, as la Perouse found the place sparely inhabited. 

As you can see there are a few shrubs in the foreground and some other bits, but there are no trees.  Easter Island was by that point largely denuded of trees, making it impossible for the islanders to build boats to fish, and their crops ultimately failing because of the attendant problems erosion and wildlife, making it difficult for much to survive on the island.  The clans set at each other, and had bitter fights, resulting later on in the clans toppling in spite the great  stone figures of the opposite clan. Easter Island became a port of call for slavers, and the population began to disappear into greed and economic lust. 

This was still decades in the future from the la Perouse expedition, his work being published posthumously nearly ten years after the captain's death.

In this  image, though, we see a rather playful interaction between the sailors and the islanders.  In the foreground-center we see an officer with two men and a woman, one of the men fingering a piece of cloth while the officer is no doubt otherwise distracted. In their background two women are seen using a mirror; to the right of them is a small group watching one of the officers draw an image of one of the Moai.  At right, around the Moai, two officers make observations for the ethnographic record, while around the corner at the monument's base an island uses a stick to try to steal one of the officer's hat.

The Maoi were still standing in 1798.  Later in the 19th century, though, after devastating attacks on one another, every monument was toppled. As were the people.  There's really not that much to the Easter-y history of the European part of the island's history, and so the irony of its naming. 

Details in Terrestrial/Celestial Globes, ca. 1725

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

{Please not--although the image is the one offered for sale here it is not framed--this is the suggestion of how the engraving would look in a simple black frame. 

• Map Terrestre / Map Celestre. This is a dual globe map showing a hemisphere of the Earth in the terrestrial globe and part of the northern sky in the celestial globe. It is a design that I see has been borrowed a number of times in the 18th century--this engraving was printed and hand colored probably around 1725. 
• Image 20x27 cm on 22x30.5cm sheet. 
• Central fold. There's a little bit of an inky smudge (as you can see in the image) left there by the colorist some 300 years ago. 
• Very good condition.  $200

The main object in this engraving--the presentation of two globes, one terrestrial and one celestial--is perhaps less interesting than secondary figures accompanying it.  The two small insets of solar and lunar eclipses are instructive and pretty, while the compass rose is full and surprisingly stubby, making that example fairly uncommon--and much more attractive when isolated and cleaned up a bit.  So too for the rudimentary but elegant comparison of the sizes of the planets compared to the Sun that surrounds the celestial globe--again, isolated and defined, the image is striking. 

 

The Beauty of Dirt

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

"All the roots hang down
Swing from town to town
They are marching around
Down under your boots
Below the gopher holes
Where they all unfold
There's a world going on underground
Underground"--Tom Waits ("Underground", with audio)

Dirt isn't just the stuff that one gets rid of, of course--it is the basis of all that we are. Varieties of dirt are the stuff of the connoisseur and the expert, and when laid out properly, and particularly in a scientific manner, dirt is exceptionally beautiful. For example, this exceptional and large illustration appears in the Atlas of American Agriculture, which was printed in a very unpretty/dustbowly year for soil, 1936.  (The image is clearer once you click in and expand.)

• "Color Principles of Representative Soils", from Atlas of American Agriculture, 1936. 20x27", printed in colors. Very vivid, and in fine condition. $85

 

The lithograph is also available for sale at the blog's bookstore, here. 

Small, Compact, Unusual Comparative Heights of Mountains Map

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post--revisited and expanded

[Small detail from the quantitative display, below; measures 2x2 3/4".]

Generally the dozens of maps/charts showing the comparative heights of mountains and lengths of rivers maps that have come through the store part of this blog have been somewhat large--or at least larger than the present example, which may be about the smallest (at about 11x8") detailed representative of this genre that I have seen. 

• "Tableu de la Hauteur des Pricnipales Montagenes du Globe" was published in Guillemin's Atlas universel de Geographie Ancienne et Moderne, and published by Langlume in 1845.  It is also at the beginning of the more-modern heyday for publishing maps and charts such as these.  (The practice began modestly at the end of the 18th century, came into a high tide in the 1850's/1860's or so, and then pretty much disappeared by the 1880's.)  This image has a few problems--there are some early pen smudges, as well as an old tear (of about three inches) that was repaired verso quite some time ago.  The margins are tight but they are all there--the image just wouldn't fit quite 100% on the scanner.  All this said, it does diminish from the value; on the other hand, this is early and uncommon.  All with that in mind: $150.

 There's a lot of comparatively-displayed information presented on 88 square inches, including the lengths of 30 rivers and the heights of about 500 mountain peaks distributed over Africa, Europe, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas.  And for as much imagery and data there is on this sheet, the whole is very nicely designed, a real success in the display of quantitative data.  

When the Barbarians Were Big

JF Ptak Science Books 

It is interesting to look at the Roman Empire from "The Other Side", seeing the world (extending from Ireland to the Caspian) of the surrounding and numerous Barbarians. This map was printed in 1808 and identifies the peoples at all points of the compass outside of the Empire:  Huns, Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Lombards, Vandals, Swedes, French, Anglo-Saxons, Sarrasins, Germans, Avars, Bulgarians, Danish, Hungarians, and others, all outlined in 14 columns beneath the central map.  This is a finely-designed, accurate, and attractive way of displaying a lot of data in a relatively small (27x21") space. 

[Note: the image below is very expandable and readable when enlarged.]

And a detail:

The map appeared in A. Le Sage (Comte de La-Casas) Atlas historique chronologique et géographique ou Tableau général de l histoire universelle présentant un moyen sûr et facile de classer avec fruit tout ce qui s est passé depuis la création jusqu à Jésus Christ espace de 4004 ans....   The sheet measures  27x21" or 68x53cm.  The coloring (except for the odd darkish green) is fairly subtle but evident and useful in distinguishing the blocks of data at an easy glance.  Printed on heavy paper. Very good condition.  $125