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Lot 257

VOLTA (ALESSANDRO)
Lettere... sull' aria infiammabile nativa delle paludi al padre Carlo Giuseppe Campi, FIRST EDITION, [colophon:] Milan, Giuseppe Marelli, [1776 or 1777]

11 November 2015, 13:00 GMT
London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £2,500 inc. premium

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VOLTA (ALESSANDRO)

Lettere... sull' aria infiammabile nativa delle paludi al padre Carlo Giuseppe Campi, FIRST EDITION, drop-head title, modern board, solander box [Duveen 606; Partington III, 814], 8vo, [colophon:] Milan, Giuseppe Marelli, [1776 or 1777]

Footnotes

Exceedingly rare 16-page pamphlet on Volta's discovery of methane, preceding the more common 1777 edition of 147 pages. Volta's two letters to Campi are dated 14 and 21 November 1776. Chemists at the time were in confusion over the various inflammable gasses. Volta collected natural gas from reed-beds in Lake Maggiore by stirring the mud with a stick and letting the bubbles pass into an inverted bottle filled with water. Observing how it burned, he distinguished it from the 'inflammable air from metals' - hydrogen. We have traced only two copies of this pamphlet at auction, and a very small handful in institutions.

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