A manual of chemistry, or a brief account of the operations of chemistry, and their products. Translated from the French of M. Beaumé, demonstrator in Chemistry at Paris, and Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences by BAUMÉ, Antoine - 1778

Warrington: printed by W. Eyres for J. Johnson, 1778. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. 1st Edition. Hardcover. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall. 12mo (165 x 100 mm). vi, [2], 400 pp., advertisement leaf for J. Johnson bound after preface. Contemporary half calf over marbled boards, gilt-lettered spine, marbled endpapers (rebacked, boards rubbed and soiled). Slightly browned internally, minor occasional foxing (stronger to title and final page). Provenance: Wigan Free Public Library (armorial bookplate to front-pagestown, shelf-mark stamp to title verso with light bleed-through). Still very good copy. ----

Duveen p. 53 ("rare"). FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH, AND OF GREAT RARITY. Rarebookhub records a single copy at auction of the first edition sold at Sothebys in 1971. Antoine Baumé (1728-1804) apprenticed with the chemist Claude Joseph Geoffroy and was admitted to the École de Pharmacie in 1752, where he was appointed professor of chemistry the same year. The money he made from a business he ran in Paris dealing in chemical products enabled him to retire in 1780 to devote himself to applied chemistry. However, when the French Revolution ruined him financially, he was forced to return to a commercial career. He developed numerous improvements to technical processes, e.g. for bleaching silk, dyeing, gilding, purifying saltpetre, etc., but he is best known as the inventor of the hydrometer, or the "spindle" (or Baumé scale), which allows measurements of the density of liquids. The scale is still associated with his name, but is often incorrectly spelled "Beaumé" (Wikisource). - Visit our website to see more images!