WELPER, Eberhard the elder.
Gnomonica, oder gründlicher Unterricht und Beschreibung, Wie man allerhand Sonnen-Uhren auf ebenen Orten künstlich aufreissen und leichlich verfertigen soll &c. Zum andermal aufgeleget und mit nutzlichen Anmerkungen, wie auch dem andern Theil, vermehret, durch einen Liebhaber der Mathematischen Wissenschaften [= Johann Christoph Sturm].
Nuremberg, Paulus Fürstens, printed by Christoph Gerhard, 1672. 2 volumes bound as 1. 4to. With a finely engraved frontispiece (an architectural gate with a wide variety of sundials and other astronomical instruments), 16 engraved plates (1 folding) in the first part (that for p. 48 repeated - at the end of vol. 2 - in accordance with the instructions to the binder), and numerous mathematical illustrations and figures on 13 folding engraved plates lettered A-N in the second part. Contemporary parchment. [12], 88; 74, [2] pp.
€ 4,250
Rare second edition (1st issue, in 2 volumes), extensively revised and enlarged, of a mathematical study of the construction of sundials, by Eberhard Welper the elder (1590-1664), first published in 1625 and here with useful additional observations and enlarged with a second part by Johann Christoph Sturm. Welper was born in Lohr (near Marburg), but studied in Strasbourg where he worked as a bookseller, printer, mathematician, astrologer and astronomer. The first edition of the present work was one of his earliest publications. Sturm greatly expanded Welpers Gnomonica for the 1672 edition, which was originally complete in the present two volumes. In 1681 Sturm added a third volume, so the present two volumes were reissued with the third. Doppelmayer added a fourth volume in 1708.
Occasionally browned, but still in good condition. A rare 17th-centry work on sundials. BMC STC (17th cen.), W815, vols. 1-2; VD17 39:119761M & 39:119760D, vols. 1-2 (6 copies); Zimmer, Astronomische Instrumente, pp. 546 & 583; cf. Zimmer, Astronomischen Literatur 5023 (1625 ed.); not in Honeyman; Poggendorff; Wheeler gift.
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