BERNOULLI, DANIEL. 1700-1782.


Hydrodynamica, sive de viribus et motibus fluidorum commentarri. Strassburg: Johann Heinrich Decker [for] Johann Reinhold Dulssecker, 1738. 4to (254 x 200 mm). Title printed in red and black. Engraved vignette on title-page, 12 engraved folding plates by Johann Martin Weis (1711-1751). Modern sheep-backed boards. Staining to title, some light browning and pale spotting. Provenance: Haskell F. Norman (his sale, Christie's New York, 15 June 1998, lot 291). FIRST EDITION. The beginning of modern hemodynamics. "Daniel Bernoulli's Hydrodynamica (a term he coined) contains his formulae for calculating the velocity, duration and quantity of liquid issuing from an opening in a container. The treatise also contains chapters on water oscillations, a theory of machinery (including an extensive treatment of the screw of Archimedes), and the properties and motions of elastic fluids (i.e. gases); in the chapter on gases, Bernoulli sketched a kinetic gas theory that allowed him to explain the basic gas laws and to anticipate Van der Waal's equation of state. Chapter 12 contains a derivation of the so-called Bernoulli equation for stationary currents, later refined by Johann Bernoulli and Euler" (Norman 215). See PMM 179.