?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
MÉCHAIN, PIERRE-FRANÇOIS-ANDRÉ; and DELAMBRE, JEAN-BAPTISTE-JOSEPH. Base du Système Mètrique Décimal;ou, Mesure de l'Arc du Méridien compris entre les Parallèles de Dunkerque et Barcelone exécutée en 1792 et Années suivantes. 28 engraved plates, most folding. [4], 180, ii, 551, [1]; xxiv, 844; [4], 704, 62 pages, including half-titles. 3 volumes. 4to, 250x190 mm, contemporary tree calf, spines in 6 compartments, with morocco lettering pieces in 2 and fishscale tooling in the rest; scattered foxing. Jersey and Chantilly Jesuit stamps on titles. Paris: Baudouin, 1806-10
first edition. The introduction of the international metric system resulted from initiatives by the Académie des Sciences and National Assembly at the beginning of the French Revolution. These culminated in the protracted geodetic project described in the present work, in which Méchain and Delambre measured an arc of the meridian from Dunkirk to Barcelona to obtain the fundamental unit of length of the system. Méchain died before finishing an extension of the arc to the Balearic Islands; Dominique-François-Jean Arago and Jean-Baptiste Biot completed the measurement, publishing their results in an 1821 volume not present here. DSB IX, 250-52; Norman 1481; Printing and the Mind of Man 260.
