12mo (148 x 79 mm). 2 folding copper engravings. Contemporary calf gilt (rebacked to style, some penciled inscriptions to interior boards, rubbing, light marginal toning to preliminary and concluding leaves). Provenance: Alexander Scott (ownership inscription); William H. Besant (1828-1917), British mathematician known for the Besant-Rayleigh-Plesset equation (ownership inscription); Edward Neville da Costa Andrade (1887-1971), British physicist (ownership bookplate).

FIRST EDITION, containing the first account of Pascal's Law, which states that any pressure change applied to a confined, incompressible fluid will be transmitted through the rest of the fluid evenly. Blaise Pascal is further remembered for his pioneering work in the development of the calculating machine, a precursor to the modern calculator. Dibner, Heralds of Science, 1980, no. 143; Norman, 1650; Sparrow, Milestones of Science, 157; Tchemerzine V, 59; Waller 12161.