Ferraris' Dioptric Instruments

214pp VG/none First edition in English, printed at the request of the Ministry of Munitions. Editorial sturdy green cloth with bright gilt lettering on front board and spine, spine slightly faded and light foxing on pastedowns and endpapers otherwise a very good, nice copy, crisp and clean. Important work by the Italian scientist Galileo Ferraris, originally published in Italian as The Fundamental Properties of Dioptric Instruments, here translated into English by Oscar Faber. From the review which apperared in Nature, the scientific journal: "The original of this translation was published by Prof. Galileo Ferraris, of Turin, in 1876. As a copy of this original could apparently not be procured, the English translation was made from a German one by Lippich, which appeared in 1879. At the time of its appearance the book unquestionably marked a great advance in the treatment of its subject, and well deserved the extremely favourable review with which Abbe honoured the German translation in the first volume of the Zeitschrift für Instrumentenkunde."