Artis Magnae Artilleriae, pars prima. LM-6
Author: Siemienowicz Casimir, 1600 - 1651
Title: Artis Magnae Artilleriae, pars prima.
Published: Apud Ioannem Ianssonium, Amsterodami, 1650.
Format: folio (30.2 x 19.8 cm). Title engraved by I.v.Meurs after the author, [12], 284, [4] pp., with 22 plates, incl. one folding; without half-title, pp. 83 - 84 misbound, marginal closed tear to one plate without affecting the image, 2 leaves with marginal browning.
Binding: contemporary vellum binding, spine with raised bands, paper label in the upper compartment, manuscript title in ink; spotted, spine and corners chipped, one page detached from the block.
First edition of this ‘volume difficile a trouver’ (Brunet). An attractive copy in the contemporary vellum binding of the celebrated work that presents the accumulated knowledge of the author's contemporaries on design and construction of rockets, fireballs, and other pyrotechnic devices, as well as his pioneering ideas on applying a reactive technique to artillery. This record of the arms history, which for over two centuries was used in Europe as a basic artillery manual, was meant to have second part, but the author died soon after publishing the first one. The present edition was quickly followed by a French (1651) and then a German (1676) and an English translations (1726).
Casimir Siemienowicz (c. 1600 - c. 1651) was a Polish-Lithuanian artillery general, military engineer and pioneer of rocketry.
Reference: Brunet V, 377.