‎Melville Herman‎
‎Mardi‎

‎OUEST FRANCE .N° du Mardi 25 Avril 1961‎

‎ OUEST FRANCE .N° du Mardi 25 Avril 1961Format : 36 x 52 cm . 20 pages.Journal bien conservé.Marque de pliure , plus importante sur la page de titre .Mardi 25 Avril :La France en alerte. ‎

‎La folle journee, ou Le mariage de Figaro, Comedie en cinq actes, en prose. par M. de Beaumarchais, représentée pour la première fois par les Comédiens français ordinaires du Roi, le mardi 27 avril 1784.‎

‎Paris, Ruault, 1785. Royal8vo (Bookblock: 247 x 147 mm). In a beautiful contemporary full red morocco binding (Anker Kyster) with gilt lettering and ornamentation to spine. Gilt borders to boards, inner gilt dentelles and gilt ornamentation to edges of boards. Single-line ruled fillets to boards and gilt oval shaped decoration centered on boards. All edges gilt. With very light occassional marginal browning. Leaf M8 and N4 with closed tear. Plate no. 2 with a few stains. An overall very nice large paper copy on véin. Half title with list of 12 booksellers and ""Avis de l' Editeur"" regarding a pirated Amsterdam edition on the verso. LI, (1), (1)-199, (2) pp. + 5 engraved plates by Lienard, Halbou und Lingee, from the illustrations by St-Quentin.‎

‎The famous Kehl-edition (printed the same year as the original, also referred to as first edition, second issue – occasionally second edition), regarded as being the most beautiful and sought after early edition. Beaumarchais used it as a way to combat piracy and counterfeiting of his play and it became an object of great desire among 19th-century bibliophiles. The original edition appeared without illustrations and almost immediately, five plates were added, drawn by St Quentin and engraved, the present edition printed in Kehl, with the new Baskerville type used for Voltaire, features the same 5 illustrations drawn by St Quentin for the original, but larger, more beautiful and engraved (plate 1, 3 and 5) by Liénard, (plate 2) by Halbou, (plate 4) by Lingée. (See Tchemerzine). “Le Mariage de Figaro"" is the second play in Beaumarchais' Figaro trilogy following “The Barber of Seville” and preceding “The Guilty Mother”. It is a political and social satire aimed at aristocratic privilege and advocating for liberty and social justice. It was initially banned by Louis XVI, only to become an symbolic work of the pre-revolutionary period in France. This Kehl edition is often seen as both a literary milestone and a masterpiece of 18th-century printing, representing Beaumarchais' genius as both a playwright and publisher. Tchemerzine II, p. 15PMM 230‎

‎Rayons émis par les composés de l'uranium et de thorium. Presentée par M. Lippmann. Séance du Mardi 12 Avril 1898).‎

‎Paris, Gauthier-Villars, 1898. 4to. No wrappers. In: ""Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de L'Academie des Sciences"", Tome 126, No 15). Entire issue offered. With htitle and titlepage to vol. 126. Pp. 1059-1110. Curie's paper: pp. 1101-1103.‎

‎First printing of this milestone paper, being the first ""Note"" from Marie Curie about ""radioactivity"". This same ""Note"" contains a the fundamental observation: ""Two uranium ores... are much more active than uranium itself. This fact... leads one to believe that these ores may contain an element much more active than uranium."" This paper gives the first proof of the fact that radiation is an atomic property.""Henri Becquerel, discovered (1896) that uranium salts shielded from light for several months spontaneously emit rays related in their effects to Roentgen rays. Mme. Curie became enthusiastic about this subject filled with the unknown and, as she later acknowledged, involving no bibliographic research.The first step in the research was to determine whether there existed other elements capable, like uranium, of emitting radiation. Abandoning the idea of hyperfluorescence, couldn’t one calculate by electrical measurement the effects on the conductivity of air that were revealed by the gold-leaf electroscope? Pierre Curie and his brother Jacques had constructed an extremely sensitive apparatus to measure weak currents"" Mme. Curie employed it in testing both pure substances and various ores. In her first ""Note"" in the Comptes rendus""de l Académie des sciences (12 April 1898) she described the method that she followed throughout her life, the method that enabled her to make comparisons through time and crosschecks with other techniques:""I employed... a plate condenser, one of the plates being covered with a uniform layer of uranium or of another finely pulverized substance [(diameter of the plates, eight centimeters"" distance between them, three centimeters). A potential difference of 100 volts was established between the plates.]. The current that traversed the condenser was measured in absolute value by means of an electrometer and a piezoelectric quartz. In general she preferred the zero method, in which the operator compensates for the current created by the active material by manipulating the quartz. All of her students followed this procedure.""(DSB).The first results came in 1898: the measurements varied between 83 × 10-12 amperes for pitch blende to less than 0.3 × 10-12 for almost inactive salts, passing through 53 × 10-12 for thorium oxide and for chalcolite (double phosphate of uranium and copper). Thorium would thus be ""radioactive"" (the term is Mme. Curie’s" its radioactive properties were discovered at the same time, independently, by Schmidt in Germany. ‎

‎Rayons émis par les composés de l'uranium et de thorium. Presentée par M. Lippmann. Séance du Mardi 12 Avril 1898).‎

‎Paris, Gauthier-Villars, 1898. 4to. No wrappers. In: ""Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de L'Academie des Sciences"", Tome 126, No 15). Entire issue offered. With htitle and titlepage to vol. 126. Pp. 1059-1110. Curie's paper: pp. 1101-1103. Clean and fine. A punched stamp in lower margin of title-page.‎

‎First printing of this milestone paper, being the first ""Note"" from Marie Curie about ""radioactivity"". This same ""Note"" contains a the fundamental observation: ""Two uranium ores... are much more active than uranium itself. This fact... leads one to believe that these ores may contain an element much more active than uranium."" This paper gives the first proof of the fact that radiation is an atomic property.""Henri Becquerel, discovered (1896) that uranium salts shielded from light for several months spontaneously emit rays related in their effects to Roentgen rays. Mme. Curie became enthusiastic about this subject filled with the unknown and, as she later acknowledged, involving no bibliographic research.The first step in the research was to determine whether there existed other elements capable, like uranium, of emitting radiation. Abandoning the idea of hyperfluorescence, couldn’t one calculate by electrical measurement the effects on the conductivity of air that were revealed by the gold-leaf electroscope? Pierre Curie and his brother Jacques had constructed an extremely sensitive apparatus to measure weak currents"" Mme. Curie employed it in testing both pure substances and various ores. In her first ""Note"" in the Comptes rendus""de l Académie des sciences (12 April 1898) she described the method that she followed throughout her life, the method that enabled her to make comparisons through time and crosschecks with other techniques:""I employed... a plate condenser, one of the plates being covered with a uniform layer of uranium or of another finely pulverized substance [(diameter of the plates, eight centimeters"" distance between them, three centimeters). A potential difference of 100 volts was established between the plates.]. The current that traversed the condenser was measured in absolute value by means of an electrometer and a piezoelectric quartz. In general she preferred the zero method, in which the operator compensates for the current created by the active material by manipulating the quartz. All of her students followed this procedure.""(DSB).The first results came in 1898: the measurements varied between 83 × 10-12 amperes for pitch blende to less than 0.3 × 10-12 for almost inactive salts, passing through 53 × 10-12 for thorium oxide and for chalcolite (double phosphate of uranium and copper). Thorium would thus be ""radioactive"" (the term is Mme. Curie’s" its radioactive properties were discovered at the same time, independently, by Schmidt in Germany. ‎

‎Sur le rayonnement des corps radio-actifs. (Séance du Mardi 26 Décembre 1899).‎

‎(Paris, Gauthier-Villars), 1899. 4to. No wrappers. In: ""Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de L'Academie des Sciences"", Tome 129, No 26. Pp. (1201-) 1296. (Entire issue offered). Becquerel's paper: pp. 1205-1207. Clean and fine.‎

‎First printing of an early importent investigation on the newly (1896) discovered phenomenon of radioactivity.""Toward the end of 1899 (his first report is dated 11 December), he began to investigate the effects on the radiation from radium of magnetic fields in various orientations to the direction of its propagation (in modern terms, the magnetic deflection of the beta rays from shortterm decay products in equilibrium with the radium). In this work he united two descriptive traditions, the magneto optics of his own experience and a line of qualitative studies of the discharge of electricity through gases. He soon moved from these to J. J. Thomson’s more radical program of quantitative observations on collimated beams, in which Thomson had shown (1897) that the cathode rays were corpuscular and consisted of streams of swiftly moving, negatively charged particles whose masses were probably subatomic. By 26 March 1900, Becquerel had duplicated those experiments for the radium radiation and had shown that it too consisted of negatively charged ions, moving at 1.6 × 1010 cm./sec. with a ratio of m/e = 10-7 gm./abcoul. Thus Thomson’s ""corpuscles"" (electrons) constituted a part of the radiations of radioactivity."" (DSB).‎