MODERN INSTRUMENTS AND METHODS OF CALCULATION, E.M. HORSBURGH 1914 FIRST EDITION

[HORSBURGH, E. M. [Ellice Martin] (1870-1935) (ed.)]. Modern Instruments and Methods of Calculation: A Handbook of the Napier Tercentenary Exhibition. London: G. Bell & Sons/ Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1914.

First edition. Cloth-bound; hardcover; quarto (26cm x 17cm x 3cm); pp. [2], vii, [3], 343, [16] advertisements. English text. Bound in publisher's original cloth; initial and terminal blanks plus half-title present; illustrated throughout with 7 plates and numerous figures and diagrams. Condition: GOOD to VERY GOOD. Binding tight and secure with the hinges and joints intact. Trivial marks to covers. Contents clean and without previous ownership markings. Lacking a dust jacket. Scarce.

Notes: Rare first edition. The Handbook was published in two forms: a softcover version, presented to those who registered for the exhibition; and a hardcover version [offered here] issued for sale under the title Modern Instruments and Methods of Calculation. Relatively few copies of the softcover version seem to have been distributed at the exhibition, partly because the exhibition took place in Edinburgh, but mainly because war broke out just after it began. Most copies were bound in cloth and sold in London. The Napier tercentenary celebration, marking the three hundredth anniversary of the publication of Napier's Mirifici logarithmorum canonis descriptio (1614), was held in Edinburgh from July 24 to July 27, 1914, just five days before the start of World War I. Participants in the exhibition included individuals and companies from Scotland, England, France, and Germany. The meeting was intended to include a colloquium on the mathematics of computation, but that was cancelled because war was considered imminent. A celebration of Napier's pivotal role in the history of calculation, the exhibition featured displays of many different types of calculating machines, as well as exhibits of other aids to calculation such as mathematical tables, the abacus and slide rules, planimeters and other integrating devices, and ruled papers and nomograms. These are described in the Handbook to the exhibition, which contains separate sections, with chapters by various contributors, devoted to each type of calculating device. Among the notable chapters is Percy E. Ludgate's 'Automatic Calculating Machines' (pp. 124-27): apart from Ludgate's 'On a proposed analytical machine' (Scientific Proceedings of the Royal Dublin Society 12 [1909]: 77-91), this chapter contains the only discussion of his improvements to Babbage's Analytical Engine (none of which was ever realized). Also of note is W. G. Smith's 'Notes on the Special Development of Calculating Ability' (pp. 60-68), discussing human 'lightning calculators' and mathematically gifted 'idiot savants,' such as were employed by Gauss. Prior to the advent of electronic digital computers, these human computers were often faster than their mechanical counterparts. The most widely used tools for calculation at the time of the Napier tercentenary were mathematical tables, which are thoroughly surveyed, explained, and described in the Handbook (bibliographical descriptions of the rare mathematical tables exhibited were published the following year in the Napier Tercentenary Memorial Volume). The Handbook also contains a large illustrated section on calculating machines, which are here divided into four types: (1) stepped-gear machines based on the Leibnitz wheel, such as those of Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar; (2) machines with variable-toothed gears, such as the Brunsviga; (3) key-set machines like those made by Burroughs; and (4) key-driven machines such as those made by Felt and Tarrant . 'The events of the First World War caused no less upheaval in the world of computing than in the rest of society. A great many technical changes, such as the ever-increasing use of punched-card accounting machines, were to cause computing to assume a different character in the time between the two World Wars. Thus the Handbook should be viewed as a report on the state of the art just before these changes were to begin taking place' (Michael R. Williams, Introduction to the 1982 MIT Press reprint edition).