Blois, Gaucher Collas, 1631.
Small 8vo [161 x 100 mm] of 4 pp., 46 pp., (1) l. of table of latitudes, pp. 47 to 69. 13 engravings in the text including one on the title. Bound in full contemporary limp vellum, title and date handwritten in ink on the upper cover, flat spine. Contemporary binding.
Extremely rare first edition of this treatise about sundial. Houzeau and Lancaster, Bibliographie générale de l’astronomie, n°11441.
“A rare work” (Catalogue of the Library of M. Guglielmo Libri, I, n°2376).
Jacques Duduict (? – 1646) was a Protestant clockmaker who settled in Blois in 1600. He had married Elisabeth Dallibert on December 19th, 1599. His workshop was located in Puy-du-Quartier and his brother Daniel was also a clockmaker. Duduict was very erudite and he wrote in 1631 a small treatise entitled “Le nouveau Sciatere, pour fabriquer toutes sortes d’Horloges solaires” dealing about new methods to build sundials. He seems to be the only clockmaker of his generation to have given up on his art when he retired in 1645.
This work gives precise details on how to make sundials, on how to use them, and it also provides with tables allowing finding the sun declination.
The term “sciatere” used by Duduict to refer to sundials comes from the Greek words “skia” (that means “shadow”) and “theran” (that means “follow”).
This treatise is illustrated in first state with 13 explanatory figures finely copper-engraved, probably by the author, who signed the one on the title.
A precious copy of this rare scientific treatise preserved in its first contemporary limp vellum binding.
Localization of the copies in France: Avignon, Orléans, Clermont-Ferrand and Bourg-en-Bresse.
Provenance: handwritten ex libris A. L. Emanueli on the endleave.
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