Bélidor — Architectura Hydraulica c.1770 (Engineering Folio, 2 Vols.)
Bélidor — Architectura Hydraulica c.1770 (Engineering Folio, 2 Vols.)
Two folio volumes of one of the foundational works of modern engineering — richly illustrated with folding copper engravings of hydraulic machines, waterworks, harbors, fortifications, and locks. The folding plates cover the full scope of Baroque-era waterworks: pumping stations, aqueducts, fire engines, fountains and water features, harbor and canal construction, dredging equipment (including shovel and bucket dredgers), bridge and lock building, dry docks, and windmill-powered drainage. Bélidor was the first to apply the then-novel differential and integral calculus to practical engineering problems.
Edition note: This is the first German edition (Augsburg: Eberhard Klett, 1764–1770), translated from the original French (Paris, 1737–1753). The text is in German Gothic (Fraktur) script. All folding plates are original copper engravings from the German edition. English-language buyers can use the text as a historical document and refer to modern editions for translation; the value of the work lies primarily in its extraordinary engineering plates, which are universally readable regardless of text language.
Folio, 34 × 22.5 cm. Two volumes, contemporary bindings.
About Bernard Forest de Bélidor (1697–1761)
Bernard Forest de Bélidor was a French military and civil engineer — a professor at the École royale d'artillerie at La Fère and the foundational figure in the establishment of hydraulic engineering as a scientific discipline. He was the first engineer to apply differential and integral calculus to practical engineering problems.
About the Work
Architecture hydraulique was published in four volumes (Paris, 1737–1753); the first German edition followed at Augsburg (Eberhard Klett, 1764–1770). The folding plates illustrate pumping stations, aqueducts, fire engines, fountains, harbor and canal construction, dredging equipment, bridge and lock building, dry docks, and windmill-powered drainage. Described in Bibliotheca Mechanica as "one of the earliest scientific books in the field of engineering."
Scarcity & Market Context
First French editions sell in the $3,000–$8,000+ range at specialist dealers (Antiquariat Tresor am Roemer, Eric Chaim Kline Bookseller, Antiquariat Peter Petrej); first German editions in the $1,500–$4,000 range. Bélidor is a benchmark work for collectors of engineering history, industrial Americana, and 18th-century scientific illustration. References: Jordan 223; Roller-Goodman I, 97; Roberts-Trent, Bibliotheca Mechanica 29f.
Institutional Holdings
Complete copies at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Deutsches Museum (Munich), the Smithsonian Libraries, the Linda Hall Library (Kansas City), and major engineering history collections worldwide.
Dimensions
Two folio volumes, each approximately 13.5 × 9 × 2 inches (34 × 22.5 cm)
Format: This is a bound book (not framed). Dimensions above refer to the book's physical size. Individual plates or pages cannot be separated without damaging the binding.
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