Beschreibung:

Fale (Thomas). Horologiographia. The Art of Dialling: teaching, an easie and perfect way to make all kinds of Dials upon any plaine plat howsoever placed. With the drawing of the twelve Signes, and houres unequall in them all. Whereunto is annexed the making and use of other Dials and Instruments, whereby the houre of the day and night is knowne: of speciall use and delight, not only for Students of the Arts Mathematicall, but also for divers Artificers, Architects, Surveyours of buildings, free-Masons and others, London, Imprinted by Felix Kyngston, 1633, [4], 60 [16] leaves, foliated, woodcut illustration of a dial to title page, woodcut initials, and numerous large woodcut diagrams and illustrations throughout (by Jodocus Hondius , pale browning to upper blank margins of title and several preliminary leaves, extensive near-contemporary manuscript notes and diagrams in brown ink to front endpaper, verso of final leaf of text, rear endpaper and inside covers, contemporary limp vellum, some soiling and darkening to spine and outer edges, with indistinct manuscript annotations to upper cover, and ownership initials 'IG' to centre of upper cover, with upper portion of the upper cover now missing (probably rodent-gnawed), small 4to (Qty: 1) Provenance: C. E. Kenney, Esq., F.S.A., F.R.I.C.S.; his sale, Sotheby's Catalogue of the Celebrated Collection, The Property of C. E. Kenney, Third Portion, Science and Surveying A to G, Monday 28th March, 1966, to Thorpe; John Lawson (1932-2019), bookseller. STC 10681 (3 copies in the U.S. and 5 elsewhere). Fourth edition of the earliest English treatise on dialling, or the design of sundials, and the author's only known publication. First published in 1593, it was reissued by Felix Kyngston in 1626, 1627, 1633 and 1652. The last 16 leaves comprise a table of sines, and was the first trigonometrical table to be printed in England. The author identifies Hondius as the engraver of the diagrams in his dedication to Thomas Osborne 'one M. Iod Hondius, who hath shewed himselfe an excellent workeman in the great Globes set forth by M. Mullineux, and the Maps of England for M. Camdens booke'. The extensive and highly technical annotations at the front and rear of the volume provide examples of how to make a variety of sundials, as well as a description of a visit to a clock maker in Bankside, London, on August 6th 1657: "Aug. 6th 1657 was at Mr Ahasuerus Foremantle at ye Bankside, & saw an exelent clock that he bin studying and making, at tymes tweenty yeers and stood him in 200 LL,: & it went with springs: & turned upon a spindle like a windmill it was about 13 inches square & 30 inches high: one the foreface it had a hand to point the houer going round in 12 houres & upon the same center went another hand about in one hower shewing the minuts. and right under the center of the hand was a motion that went about once a yeer rasing the 12 signes with a litle pointer fixed to the center of the hand; which shewed in what sine & deg the [sun] was in each day in the yeer...". A pencil transcription of this text (on the rear inside cover) accompanies the volume.