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Gaspard SCHOTT

Mechanica hydraulico-pneumatica

H. Pigrin pour J. G. Schönwetter, [Paris] 1657, in-4 (15,5x20,5cm), (28p.) 488pp. (16p.), relié.

First edition illustrated with folding frontispiece as well as 46 engravings on 45 plates, at times folded. Armorial vignette on the reserve of the title leaf.

Contemporary binding in full pigskin on wooden boards, spine in four compartments decorated with blind tooling presenting the author's name, the title, as well as a library shelf mark in ink, boards framed with multiple fillets and blind-tool stamped dentelle, initials in black ink R. W. A. T. and dated 1663, upper board stamped in the centre with the Austrian Guttenstein coat of arms sitting atop a bishop's mitre, preserved clasps, all edges blue.
A one centimetre wormhole on the lower board. Worm holes in the margins of the upper inner cover and the first two white endpapers, touching the text of the title page without any missing text.
Two handwritten library shelf marks on the inner cover and the first endpaper, as well as an ex-dono written in partially erased ink on the title page.
The first work published by Gaspar Schott (1608-1666), Mechanica hydraulico-pneumatica is a summary of his research and that of his teacher, Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680), on pneumatic and hydraulic machines. The first part, purely theoretical, is the counterpart to the second, where hydraulic machines are presented both technically and aesthetically. The appendix contains the first description of Otto von Guericke's (1602-1686) experiments on air pump as well as on atmospheric pressure, experiments known as the “Magdebourg hemispheres.”
This work's assembly of both theoretical and practical parts is indicative of the porous nature of disciplines at the time. Through the frontispiece and the numerous engravings, scientific thinking thus fits closely with artistic development, testifying to the baroque fascination with hydraulic systems and fountains, an art that was particularly appreciated in the 17th century. “The crowd of curious people who came to visit the Kircher practice, full of a large number of pneumatic and hydraulic machines, gave Schott the idea of producing the description. When working on it, he remembered the other machines that he had seen himself, or that had been described in books; and the collection of these different machines formed this first work.” (Mercier de Saint-Léger). The work also contains a remarkable development on the use of the hydraulic mechanics in music through the illustrated presentation of an astonishing water organ.
Furthermore, Schott is the first physician to understand the importance of the Guericke research of which he presents a report that he adds in extremis before the first publication (see p. 441: Experimentum novum Magdeburgicum). Enriched by this unpublished appendix, Mechanica hydraulico-pneumatica then becomes a work was that particularly sought after by scientists and amateurs of the time. Thanks to this intuition, Schott attracts the attention of his peers, and notably of Guericke and Boyle, with whom he begins detailed correspondence, allowing a dynamic circulation of ideas and discoveries. The book marks an important milestone in the technological advances, since it is from reading about Guericke's experience that Robert Boyle (1625-1691) builds and perfects the first air pump in 1659, two years after the publication of the present work.
Situated at the crossroads between scientific research and baroque aesthetic sensitivity, Schott's work on hydraulics responds to the intellectual and artistic interest in water machines, of which the construction of Marly's machine, the great feeding system of the Versailles fountains, will be emblematic at the end of the century.

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