Vassalli Eandi - Lettere Fisico-Meteorologiche - 1789

Rare first edition of this important scientific work by Vassalli Eandi (1761-1825), who was professor of physics at the University of Turin and at that time was focusing his studies on the nascent animal electricity (galvanism) and on the electricity of the air. The volume gathers the dense epistolary exchange with three of the brightest minds of the European scientific Enlightenment in the field of Earth and atmospheric sciences.

The work fits into the lively late eighteenth-century debate on the consolidation of meteorology as a quantitative science, based on the use of precision instruments (such as barometers, thermometers and hygrometers) and on the analysis of atmospheric electrical phenomena. In the epistolary exchange, Vassalli responds to the questions and theories of the three scientists, discussing the origin of meteorological phenomena, variations in atmospheric pressure, and the effects of electricity on climate and on living organisms. Cf. Poggendorf, II, 1179.

Letters physico-meteorological of the celeberrimi physicists Senebier, De Saussure, and Toaldo with the replies of Anton-Maria Vassalli..., Turin, Royal Press, 1789.

Pp.: 223, (I). COMPLETE.

A genuine copy still in its original binding with plates in overall very good condition. Slight damp-stain at the upper margin of some plates.

Contemporary publisher’s paperback binding, decorated in print, very well preserved. Endpapers white."