4to (201 x 145 mm), pp [xx] 100 [recte 99] [ [1, blank], with woodcut printer's device on title, 13 woodcut illustrations in text and four double-page folding woodcut plates included in the pagination (numbered 69, 70, 75, and 78); margins of one plate frayed and repaired just touching the woodcut border, some occasional slight waterstaining, title and final three leaves with some marginal wormholes, a ver good copy in contemporary Italian half vellum over boards, spine lettered in ink, some contemporary marginalia in ink to the text. £6500
First edition of a scarce and finely illustrated work on improvements to the Archimedean screw, and the ‘first published proposal for a systematic scheme of irrigation using a standardized mechanical device That alone would deserve attention; but Ceredi also analyzed the economic feasibility of his scheme and went on to consider certain of its implications with respect to public health, land utilization, navigable streams, and the effect on the poor of a competitive export advantage’ (Drake, Essays on Galileo vol III p 171).
In the third century BC, Archimedes invented a pump widely used in the Classical world. The mechanism moved water through rotation upward along an axis, but was little known in the Middle Ages as there was no clear description of it nor a written instruction how to build it. Following Ceredi’s description, and the granting of a patent by the Venetian Republic, these pumps became more widely used in Southern Europe for drainage and irrigation. Galileo, who subsequently improved the device, was granted a patent for raising water by horse-power (see Stillman Drake, Galileo at Work, p 35). ‘The engineer Giuseppe Ceredi of Piacenza ... published at Parma in 1567 a book called Tre Discorsi sopra il Modo d'AlzarAcque da’ Luoghi Bassi (Three Discourses on Means of Raising Water from Low Places). Ceredi was interested in the construction and use of the Archimedean screw for the irrigation of fields and the draining of swamps. He had found that the devices in use were inefficient, and sought to discover the rules of design by which they might be improved. The results led him to specify a maximum length and optimum dimension for the water-channel, to suggest batteries of screws for lifts higher than the efficient maximum length, and to examine the design of cranks and other devices for turning the screws. Though not written in deductive form, Ceredi’s investigations belong to theoretical mechanics; they are reminiscent of the experiential rules given by Philo of Byzantium for the construction of ballistae. Also worthy of note, though unrelated to our subject, is Ceredi’s economic analysis of the probable gain in crop yield through irrigation as compared with the operating and capital costs of machinery and the expense of labour in harvesting and hauling to market the increased yield. Ceredi obtained a patent from Ottavio Farnese in 1566 for the development of his machines, a fact suggesting that at Parma he may have talked with Benedetti, who was then Farnese’s adviser on engineering matters. Ceredi was familiar with the works of Archimedes and Pappus; among later writers he mentions Giorgio Valla, Girolamo Cardano, and Georg Agricola’ (Drake and Drabkin, Mechanics in Sixteenth-Cenury Italy pp 51-2).The four plates each have a single page number (69, 70, 75, and 78 and are included in the pagination; the text itself runs pp 1-68, 70-74, 76-77, 79-100, with p. 82 omitted, hence it ends with an even number on a recto.
Adams C1280; Hoover 210 (mentioning one plate only); Riccardi I 339; Wellcome 1411; not in Roberts and Trent; see Stillman Drake, ‘An Agricultural Economist of the Late Renaissance’, Essays on Galileo vol III, pp 170-89; NUC: IU DC MH DP NN CtY PBL ICJ DFo PPF; OCLC adds UCLA, Delaware, Iowa, Linda Hall, Public Library of Cincinnati, CalTech, Claremont College, Huntington Library, Smithsonian and Burndy Library
GBP 6500.00
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