BABBAGE, CHARLES. A Letter to Sir Humphry Davy . . . On the Application of Machinery to the Purpose of Calculating and Printing Mathematical Tables. 12 pages. 4to, 19th-century .5 calf, spine slightly faded and scuffed. London, 1822 E1000-2000 FIRST

BABBAGE, CHARLES. A Letter to Sir Humphry Davy . . . On the Application of Machinery to the Purpose of Calculating and Printing Mathematical Tables. 12 pages. 4to, 19th-century .5 calf, spine slightly faded and scuffed. London, 1822 E1000-2000 FIRST EDITION of Babbage's proposals for the production of his first caculating machine. "The first Difference Engine was Babbage's great practical engineering project, vastly more complex than any previously conceivedmechanical calculator. The advances in machine tools and machining techniques developed in making the first Difference Engine were to have a far reaching effect on the subsequent development of precisionengineering . . . His first Difference Engine was intended for makingtables although it could also be used for other purposes, such as solving equations . . . Babbage considered two main methods for storing numbers. One was to store each digit of a number on a straight metal strip or rod . . . The second was storing the digits on toothed wheels as in the early hand calculators of Pascal, Leibniz and others . . . By 1822 a model with six figure-wheels worked satisfactorily, tangible proof that the principle was correct . . . Heannounced the project by publishing his proposals in the form of an open letter dated 3 July 1822 to Sir Humphry Davy, Bart., President of the Royal Society"-Anthony Hyman, Charles Babbage (1982), pages 4751. Bound with 14 contemporary French-language pamphlets on miscellaneous scientific topics. COMPLETE LIST AVAILABLE ON REQUEST.