Rare books from Alembic Rare Books

Urbana & London: University of Illinois Press, 1966. Octavo. Original green cloth, titles to spine and upper board in black. With the dust jacket. Contemporary ownership signature in blue ink to the front free endpaper. An excellent, fresh copy in the lightly rubbed jacket that is tanned, particularly along the spine panel, and has some nicks and short splits at the edges. First edition of this important work on self-reproduction in machines and life forms, scare in the dust jacket. Von Neumann became interested in the abilities of computers to self-reproduce during his work on the Institute for Advanced Studies computer project - noting that, since a Turing machine can make exact copies of any readable sequence, it can copy itself. He hoped to formulate a theory of self-reproduction that would be general enough to explain and predict self-reproduction in both machines and living things. "Using the same method of logical substitution by which a Turing machine can be instructed to interpret… Read More

Chicago, 1952-53. Including 3 typed letters signed (one with the signature removed for reproduction in Vistas in Astronomy) and 2 autograph letters signed by Urey. Housed in Beer's tan paper folder with "Urey" in ink on the cover. Just a little creasing to some pieces. Excellent condition. An archive of correspondence between astronomer Arthur Beer and Nobel Prize winning chemist Harold Urey regarding the latter's contribution to Vistas in Astronomy. Beer (1900-1980) was born in Richenberg, Bohemia (later Czechoslovakia), and educated in Austria and Germany. He worked as an astronomer at Breslau University, where he studied binary stars, and at the German Maritime Observatory. He also wrote newspaper columns and was responsible for developing one of the first scientific radio programmes, Aus Natur und Technik. Beer escaped from Germany in 1934, assisted by Einstein, who wrote him a public letter of recommendation, and spent the rest of his life in the UK. He worked at the Cambridge Solar Physics… Read More

[England, 1982]. Poster (420mm x 580mm). Professionally mounted, framed and glazed using archival materials. White text and graphic of a missile caught in a spider's web superimposed over a grey and red photograph of the mushroom cloud over Nagasaki. Marker pen notes at the bottom of the poster give contact details and instructions for travelling to the camp by bus from Birmingham. Light creases from old folds into four, some slight surface scuffs. Very good condition. A rare poster advertising Embrace the Base, one of the key mass actions at the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp. We have been able to locate only two other copies in institutional collections, at the LSE Women's Library and the Glasgow Women's Library. The Greenham Common protest was established in September of 1981 by the Welsh group Women for Life on Earth, who were opposed to the deployment of nuclear tipped Cruise missiles at the site. What was initially planned as a single march became a permanent protest camp in place until… Read More

Washington D.C.: US Govt. Printing Office, 1942. Colour poster (28 x 40 in). Professionally mounted, glazed, and framed using archival materials. Original creases from folding, bright and fresh. Excellent condition. An important Second World War poster promoting women in the wartime workforce, produced in 1942 by the War Manpower Commission. At the time, "Women in the War" was one of the most widely distributed images of a woman laboring in war production, unlike the "We Can Do It" poster, which was produced only for Westinghouse plants during a few weeks in 1943 and did not become iconic until the 1980s. "Among the many agencies President Roosevelt had created during the war was the War Manpower Commission, formed in April 1942 to oversee war labor issues in the military, industrial, and civilian sectors. And in June 1942, the Office of War Information was formed to manage the flows of news and propaganda about the war to the public. By 1943, when the labor shortage was most acute, the two… Read More

Chiacgo, IL: The University of Chicago, 1929. 25 page pamphlet. Original grey wrappers printed in black. 4 colour plates, 5 illustrations from microphotographs within the text. Closed tears to the wrappers at the head and tail of spine, light toning and dulling at the edges of the wrappers, a few light marks, contents faintly toned. Very good condition. The rare offprint of the dissertation of the first Black American to earn a doctorate in anatomy, a presentation copy inscribed by the author to his doctoral advisor on the upper wrapper, "To Dr. W. Bloom with my best regards, Roscoe L. McKinney". WorldCat locates only three institutional copies: at Duke University, the University of Chicago, and the Bibliothèque Nationale. Roscoe L. McKinney (1900-1978) earned his bachelor's degree from Bates College in 1921 and then worked as a biology professor, first at Morehouse and then at Howard University, where his department head was the famed zoologist Ernest Everett Just. McKinney's doctoral work was… Read More

Paris: Masson et Cie, Libraires de l'Académie de Médecine, 1959. Octavo. Original grey wrappers printed in black. 3 double-sided plates from photographs. Wrappers rubbed, a little creased, and partially tanned with a few small spots and marks. Slight crease affecting the margins of the first half of the contents. A very good copy. First edition, first impression of this uncommon and important monograph on bacterial genetics. An exceptional presentation copy signed by author François Jacob, with whom Brenner would partner only a year later to perform one of the most elegant experiments in the history of biochemistry, proving the role of messenger RNA and elucidating a key mechanism in the cell's process for decoding DNA. Cheekily inscribed by Jacob's co-author, Elie Wollman (1917-2008), "To Sydney Brenner, to disgust him / a good of bacterial sex" (possibly missing the word "dose" or similar before "bacterial sex"). And with Brenner's ownership signature in pencil on the upper cover. Wollman and… Read More

[Edinburgh], June 1848. Lithograph (print 115 x 182 mm; sheet 277 x 384 mm). Conservation mounted, framed and glazed using archival materials. Professionally cleaned using archival methods but with some faint spots remaining, short closed tear at the right edge archivally repaired. Excellent condition. A rare and evocative lithograph of the Great Comet of 1843 as seen from the Cape of Good Hope, observed and, most unusually, also lithographed by the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819-1900). Copies of this print are exceptionally scarce, with none recorded in COPAC, WorldCat, or auction records. Given that the paper was never published, it seems unlikely that more than a handful were produced. Smyth was born to well-connected British parents in Naples, his father being a naval officer and respected amateur astronomer, and his mother the daughter of the British Consul to the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Smyth's godfather was the famous Sicilian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi, from… Read More

London: Lloyd Bros. & Leggatt, Hayward & Leggatt, May 1, 1850. Mezzotint (print 280 x 425 mm, sheet 320 x 445 mm). Professionally conserved and cleaned. Mounted, framed and glazed using archival materials. Pencilled note "Astronomy" to the sheet. Some minor creases affecting the image, paper lightly toned. Very good condition. A dramatic and uncommon mezzotint depicting the spectacular meteor seen in London on February 11th, 1850, by the prominent court artist Matthew Coates Wyatt (1777-1862). One other copy of this print appears in recent auction records, sold at Galerie Bassenge in 2016, and institutional copies are held at the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, Museum Bojmans in Rotterdam, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the British Museum, which has George Cruikshank's copy, presented to him by the artist. "In 1850 a huge meteor appeared over England and was visible in London. It was captured dramatically by Matthew Coates Wyatt over Paddington in a mezzotint that suggests, due to the… Read More

[Edinburgh], June 1848. Lithograph (print 190 x 264 mm; sheet 277 x 384 mm). Professionally mounted, framed and glazed using archival materials. The printed captions have been amended in pencil, in a contemporary hand, to record that the prints were "del & lith" - drawn and lithographed - by "CPS". Professionally cleaned using archival methods but with some faint spots remaining, some light creasing and four short closed tears at the bottom edge of the sheet which have been archivally repaired, another short closed tear at the upper edge with the same treatment, none affecting the image. Miniscule pinprick at the top left and lower right corners of the lithograph Very good condition. A rare and evocative lithograph of the zodiacal light as seen from the Breede River in South Africa, observed and, most unusually, lithographed by the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819-1900). Smyth's print was "the first attempt to furnish a realistic depiction of this elusive feature" of the… Read More

East Northport, NY, 1985-1993. 19 spiral-bound pocket notebooks, each approximately 120 pages, with card covers (approximately 160 x 110 mm), completely filled with extensive manuscript notes in black, and occasionally red, ink. All but one of the notebooks are numbered (6 through 24) and each is labelled on the cover with the month and year that it was begun and ended. The other is labelled "Feeder Notes, East Northport L. I. N. Y., Nov 1986 - Feb 1993". Inside each of the covers Boltson has written his name, address, phone number, and current roles in birding organisations. The brands of the notebooks are Pen-Tab, Jericho, Diamond Supply Company, and CVS. Most of the contents are manuscript text, but there are frequent drawings and sometimes loosely inserted material. Notebook 11 (September 1987-March 1988) is lacking, and presumably there were also notebooks numbered 1-5 that are not included here. There is light wear to the edges of the notebooks, especially around the upper corners. Excellent… Read More

Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1939. Quarto. 20-page offprint, original green wrappers printed in black. A little fading along the spine and edges, lightly rubbed at the extremities. An excellent copy. The Abhandlungen offprint of the first of Hahn and Strassman's "three fundamental papers on nuclear fission, containing the first comprehensive account of the phenomenon" (Hook & Norman, Norman Library of Science and Medicine 963). Abhandlungen issues in the green wrappers are not true offprints because they could contain multiple papers, though in the case of the Hahn & Strassman fission papers each contains only the one paper. Offprints in the orange wrappers labelled "Einzelausgabe" are the true offprints, as they only ever contained a single paper. "In 1938 Hahn and Strassman had demonstrated the presence of radioactive barium, lanthanum and cerium among the products of neutron bombardment of uranium, an observation that seemed to contradict all previous experiences of nuclear physics"… Read More

Paris: Librairie Centraledes Beaux-Arts, [c. 1904]. Folio. Half title and 50 tinted collotype prints after photographs, 4-page title and publisher's prospectus printed in green and brown. In the original linen-backed card portfolio with linen ties. Bernard Quaritch ink stamp to the title, ink stamp of the Birmingham Assay office Library to the inside of the cover. Portfolio browned and rubbed with some wear at the corners and slight creasing to the upper cover, linen ties browned but intact, title and prospectus toned and a little rubbed at the extremities, plates very faintly toned at the edges. Portfolio professionally cleaned and spine caps repaired by Bainbridge Conservation. Very good condition. A striking Art Nouveau design portfolio, unusual for using photography to depict geometric floral arrangements. This portfolio is usually attributed to the French designer and commercial artist Maurice Pillard Verneuil (1869-1942), a student of Eugène Grasset whose career successfully spanned the Art… Read More

Peterborough, 1939-1941. Quarto (230 x 175 mm). Ready-made journal, burgundy pebble-grain cloth backstrip, blue moiré boards, lined paper. Approximately 86 pages of manuscript text, plus loosely inserted manuscript leaves. Ephemera and documents both pasted in and loosely inserted. 65 photographs, primarily 85 x 60 mm with white borders, though a handful are slightly larger and without borders. Most of these are pasted-in, but a handful are loosely inserted. Early in the diary there are glue spots where 4 photos were once attached, and at least two of the loosely inserted prints also have glue on the back. 4 modern white label stickers pasted over some text on the final left, presumably to hide it. Significant wear to the spine and boards, contents shaken, occasional light spotting to contents which are clean and legible. Very good condition. A dense, detailed, and revealing diary chronicling the first two years of the Second World War by Marjorie True of Peterborough's Cathedral precinct, who was… Read More

Paris: [O. Doin], 1902. Folio (305 x 201 mm). Contemporary red half morocco, marbled sides and endpapers, spine titles gilt, five raised bands. 69 pages of manuscript text in black ink, rectos only. 10 photographs and 1 printed illustration mounted on card, 26 plans and technical drawings of which 8 are printed in blue. Some wear and scuffing to the boards, primarily the edges, and a little soiling and dust affecting the binding, spotting to the edges of the text block, contents lightly toned with the occasional light spot. Photograph 9 detached from its card backing and loosely inserted. Very good condition. An elegant manuscript copy, probably made for presentation, of a report on the organisation of the French military railway hospital system by the doctor in charge of it. The text was published in book form by O. Doin of Paris in 1902. Dr. Paul Redard (d. 1917) was "a well-known orthopaedic surgeon of Paris" who "took his doctor's degree in 1879... He was the author of monographs on… Read More

New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969. Octavo. Original brick red cloth, titles to spine and upper board in white with black accents. With the dust jacket. A handful of lightly pencilled check marks in the margins. Spine rolled, cloth lightly rubbed at the edges, thin dark mark on the lower board. A very good copy in the rubbed jacket with faded spine panel and some wear and tiny nicks at the edges. First edition, first printing and rare in commerce. James E. Webb (1906-1996) was NASA's second administrator and arguably its most significant, seeing the agency through the Mercury and Gemini programs and the preparation for the Apollo missions. This volume is based on a series of lectures given at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business in 1968, and discusses Webb's experience of leading one of the largest and most complex organisations ever established. It explores why traditional management systems were no longer sufficient for modern technological undertakings, describes new methods pioneered by… Read More