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First and only edition of an important manual on the construction of telescopes and microscopes

FUSSN1774
Instruction détaillée pour porter les lunettes de toutes les différentes especes au plus haut degré de perfection dont elles sont susceptibles tirée de la théorie dioptrique de Mr. Euler le pere et mise a la portée de tous les ouvriers en ce genre. Avec la description dún microscope qui peut passer pour le plus parfait dans son espèce et qui est propre à produire tous les grossissemens qu'on voudra.

Two folding engraved plates.

Two folding engraved plates.



St. Petersburg, Académie Imp. des sciences, 1774. 4to. Contemporary marbled calf, spine gilt with red morocco title label, red edges. Two folding engraved plates. (10), 83, (1 blank) pp.

First and only edition of an important manual on the construction of telescopes and microscopes by Nicolaus Fuss (1755-1826), who grew up in a modest Swiss family. He was discovered by Daniel Bernoulli, already at an early age manifesting mathematical abilities. Bernoulli recommended Nicolaus in 1772 to Euler, who then lived in Russia, as a secretary. Euler studied the theory of the construction of compound microscope and telescope lenses, and also studied the achromatic objectives after their discovery. Fuss was seventeen years old when he arrived in St. Petersburg, where he would spend the rest of his life. He wrote his first papers, with purely practical goals, under Euler's direct guidance. The majority of Fuss's writings consisted of solutions to problems raised by Euler, in the fields of mathematics, mechanics, astronomy, and geodesy. Euler's memoirs had been published before, but they were inaccessible to the majority of opticians. Fuss published the present work, giving a very simple and rather schematic résumé of Euler's works. He listed "a number of formulae for the construction of telescopes with a magnification of five to fifty times, for achromotic telescopes with three lenses and a magnification from 25 to 320 times, and for achromatic telescopes with four or five lenses" (Daumas). Fuss gave all the necessary theoretical measurements for constructing these instruments. At the end a description is given of a microscope with an achromatic objective of three lenses.
Although the present work was meant as a manual for the practitioners, it had no great influence in the manner of production. It is possible that this had something to do with St. Petersburg being the point of distribution, the work was not widely scattered over Europe. Fuss's book however was "appreciated by his contemporaries, and doubtless inspired the attempts to produce achromatic microscopes made at the end of the eightteenth and in the early nineteenth century" (Daumas).

Good copy.- (Spine rest.).
DSB V, p. 209-210; Poggendorff I, 821, Daumas, Scientific instruments, p. 152-153.

Related Subjects: Mathematics  Optics  Science 

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