?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
LANA TERZI, FRANCESCO, S.J. Prodromo overo Saggio di Alcune Inventioni Nuove premesso all'Arte Maestra. 20 engraved plates. [8], 252 pages. Folio, 315x227 mm, modern mottled leather gilt; contents unobtrusively washed with residual minor soiling and stains on title and elsewhere, blank lower outer corner of G1 restored. Brescia: Rizzardi, 1670
first edition of a work on miscellaneous inventions and innovations, with chapters on cryptography, mechanical engineering, optics, artists' materials, etc. "Lana Terzi's Prodromo is best known for presenting the earliest concept of flight derived from demonstrable aerostatic principles. He determined by experiment that a vessel may be made lighter by reducing the air density within it, and proposed to build a 'flying boat' suspended from four large spheres of thin copper, from which all or part of the air would be evacuated to achieve buoyancy"--Norman 1272. Gamba 1053; Riccardi II, 13.
