Tredgold on the Steam Engine. Locomotive and Stationary Engines: The Principles and Practice of their Construction, Exemplified in Numerous Examples. With Descriptive Text by Eminent Engineers

London: Virtue & Co, n.d. [but ca. 1860]. Quarto (33cm). In original brown cloth boards stamped in blind, rebacked in reddish tan leather with title in gilt on brown leather spine label; plain endpapers; viii, [i]-vi [7]-72, [1-2], [1]-12, [1]-40, [1]-44, [1]-68, [1]-12, [1]-8, [1]-16, [1]-4, [1]-4, [1]-32, [1]-4, [1]-8pp; with 62 folding plates and numerous in-text wood engravings, complete. A sturdy copy, though rebacked and externally rubbed, with mild foxing, occasional dirt to fore-edges, and minor damage to plates, as follows: two plates with small perforations to fore-edge, two plates with small perforations at gutter, one plate with minor tears at folds, neatly mended, three plates reinforced wtih paper strips, front free endpaper creased with minor perforations repaired; but largely clean, on the whole a Good or better copy.

A reprint of articles on steam locomotives and stationary engines, from the 1850s edition of Thomas Tredgold's treatise The Steam Engine. The publisher, James Sprent Virtue (1829-1892), purchased the Rudimentary Series of engineering and scientific publications from Thomas Tredgold's publisher John Weale at some point in the 1850s. It appears that he also took over the publication rights to Tredgold's Steam Engine, which he reissued as two separate titles, Locomotive and Stationary Engines and Marine Engines and Boilers, so that engineers could "purchase separately that portion only which is more especially applicable to their individual practice" (iii).

Tredgold (1788-1829) was a self-taught engineer and widely read technical author who also published on timber and carpentry, cast iron, railroads and carriages, and heating and ventilation. Several of his works became "the standard textbooks of English engineers" (ODNB). His final work The Steam Engine (1827) was a "notable contribution to steam engine design and theory" (James K. Finch, Engineering Classics, p.110). Architectual publisher John Weale published significantly expanded second and third editions in 1838 and in 1850. Tredgold may be best remembered for his definition of engineering, used by the Institute of Civil Engineers in its 1828 application for a royal charter: "the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man" (Miller, "The Classics of Engineering Literature," College English 19:2, 1957). LOWNDES 2709.