From the Erwin Tomash collection. Two works extracted from the first volume of the 1655-1656 Dozza edition of Galileo's Opere, comprising Capra's (1580-1626) treatise on the use and construction of proportional compasses (signatures []4 A-K4) and Galileo's (1564-1642) resulting attack on Capra (L-V4). Illustrated throughout with woodcut diagrams and full-page tables.

First published in 1607, Usus et fabrica was suppressed by the University of Padua following a complaint by Galileo that the work plagiarised his earlier Le operazioni del compasso geometrico militare (1606). The text essentially amounted to a Latin translation of this work, and the proportional compass Capra claimed to have invented in Usus had in fact been developed earlier in the sixteenth century, with important contributions made to its design by Galileo in the 1590s.

With book label for Erwin Tomash (1921-2012), whose important library of scientific texts on the history of computing was sold by Sotheby's in September 2018.

Second edition; 4to (24 x 18 cm); woodcut devices to titles, woodcut headpiece and initials, numerous woodcut diagrams including full-page tables, book label to front pastedown; rebacked vellum, endpapers and pastedown reusing old manuscripts (dated Florence 1743), modern cloth clamshell box, minor damp-staining to bottom margin of last few quires; [8], 160pp; signatures: []4 A-V4.