Item No. 128
also active in the revival of Freemasonry in England in the early 18 th -century and is sometime referred to as the Father of Modern speculative Freemasonry. This book may be one of the earliest “piracies” in the post-Newton era of the physical sciences, having been issued without authorization of the author through an arrangement of the publisher with a Paul Dawson, who had attended Desaguliers’s lectures and requested a copy of the lecture notes to help in with his studies. The DNB states that Desaguliers “disavowed” this edition, but as is evident in his Preface, or Advertisement to the Reader, added, along with a revised title page, after the original publication, he apparently came to a satisfactory financial settlement with Mears and Creake. “But as the <strong>Books</strong>ellers have made me Satisfaction, and purchased the Copy of me, I have looked over the whole Book, and corrected every Error therein; because I was unwilling that those who buy it should find it in any wise imperfect, and desirous that it might be of use to such as go thro’ Courses of Experimental Philosophy.” This is a rare volume, preserving the both the unauthorized and authorized title pages and prefaces, retaining Paul Dawson’s five-page Dedication. In addition, all of the suggested emendations in Desaguliers’s Errata have been hand written in the text by a contemporary hand. In quarto, (a4), b4, A-Z4, Aa-Cc4, Dd1. The text is slightly browned with some foxing, but over all very good, with head and final chapter vignettes. The contemporary ‘Cambridge’ binding has been re-backed, with gilt lettering pieces, but the front and rear calf boards have been well preserved. $3,250.00 Personally Inscribed by “Ritty” Feynman 129. Feynman, Richard. THE CHARACTER OF PHYSICAL LAW. Cambridge: The M.I.T. Press, 1983. Paperback reprint. With a personal 1984 inscription signed “Ritty” Feynman “To my very old friend and Far Rockaway neighbor of over half a century ago.” Richard Feynman (1918-1988) was notoriously reluctant to sign books, but he graciously inscribed this copy, using his childhood nickname, for a woman attending one of his Esalen lectures in California who had grown up in Far Rockaway in the house directly next door to Feynman’s. She was a few years younger but had known “Ritty” Feynman well and often recalled for her family his performing magic tricks in her parent’s living room when they were growing up. From the time he was a young boy, his father encouraged him to think about how things worked and taught him to frame questions in simple physical terms. By his last years in high school he had developed a facility for calculating solutions to physics problems that would have been the envy of most graduate students. From Far Rockaway High School, he went to M.I.T. and then to Princeton where he received his Ph.D in physics in 1942. His theoretical work in quantum electrodynamics and the invention of his “Feynman Diagrams” brought him the Nobel Prize in 1965. No other American-born scientist has ever captured the public’s imagination as Feynman did, from the tales of his participation in the Manhattan Project early in his career, where he was known for playing the bongos and his ability to pick open the safes containing classified secrets, through to his work on the Rogers Commission investigating the causes of the Challenger disaster where he gave his famous public demonstration showing what happens to an “O-Ring” after being dipped into liquid nitrogen. A year after this book was inscribed, his autobiographical essays, Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman: Adventures of a Curious Character, became a bestseller and confirmed his popular reputation. We do not know of any other personally inscribed book of Feynman’s ever appearing for sale. Supporting provenance available. Price on request.
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