Tartaglia, La nova scientia, Venice, 1537, modern vellum

TARTAGLIA, NICCOLÒ FONTANA

La nova scientia inventa da Nicolo Tartalea. Venice: Stefano Niccolini da Sabbio, 1537

FIRST EDITION, small 4to (200 x 145mm.), woodcut title and illustrations throughout, with blank A4, modern vellum, new endpapers, small wormhole to L3

"Tartaglia describes an instrument, the gunner’s quadrant, used to accurately set the elevation of the guns. He then adds sights and better scales to produce a military surveying instrument. The gunner’s quadrant was equipped with a plumb bob and scale marked in points of elevation (usually twelve). A gun elevated at 45 degrees was said to be at point 6 range. When horizontal, the plum bob would cut the zero point on the scale—however, since the points were marked in Roman numerals, which have no zero, the position was simply left blank. Hence we have the term point blank range. Even after the general acceptance of the Hindu-Arabic numerals, the tradition of leaving the zero point blank on cannon elevation scales remained and this feature can often be seen on the sides of cannons dating from as late as the nineteenth century" (Tomash and Williams).

LITERATURE:

Edit16 32915; Tomash & Williams T7; USTC 858098

PROVENANCE:

bought from Mediolanum, Milan, 1990; Erwin Tomash, booklabel