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ALDE

77 - HAUTEFEUILLE (Jean de). A collection of the works of M.
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Estimate €15,000 - €20,000
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Description
HAUTEFEUILLE (Jean de). A collection of the works of M. de Haute-Feuille, containing several new discoveries and inventions in physics and mechanics. [Paris, Daniel Horthemels, 1692 (i.e. 1674–1723)]. – Bound together with: GRILLET (René). Mathematical curiosities from the invention of Mr Grillet, clockmaker in Paris. Paris, J.-B. Coignard and the author, 1673. 62 printed and handwritten pieces in one quarto volume, marbled calfskin, decorated spine, variegated edges (contemporary binding). A very rare and fascinating collection of memoirs and articles by the inventor Jean de Hautefeuille. This artificial collection contains the first collected edition of his works, comprising seven pieces published separately between 1674 and 1683, brought together in 1692 under a general title, to which have been added a great many other memoirs by the author published up to his death in 1724. The BnF copy contains ten pieces; three other copies that have appeared on the market in recent years contained between eighteen and thirty. This copy is by far the most complete known to exist, as it contains sixty-one pieces, including forty-nine printed and twelve manuscripts; amongst these are two autograph treatises and a third corrected in the author’s own hand. All the printed pieces are first editions and the manuscript pieces are almost all unpublished, presumably copied from the author’s own manuscripts. These treatises deal with inventions devised by Hautefeuille, particularly in the field of horology, his dispute with Huygens, and his work in physics, mechanics, optics, acoustics, astronomy, hydraulics, maritime navigation, gnomonics and surveying, etc. A dozen articles collected in the ‘Other works by the same author’ (pp. 559–634) are devoted to economics and finance and deal more specifically with banknotes and royal lotteries. Abbé de Hautefeuille (1647–1724), a physicist and inventor from Orléans, took an interest in acoustics (megaphones, echoes), optics (lenses) and clockmaking.... He devised a method of collecting water using the explosive force of gunpowder, and an instrument for recording tides, the thalassameter; in 1678 he proposed a primitive form of internal combustion engine based on gunpowder, and he was the first, before Huygens, to propose the use of a piston in a heat engine. One of his most significant contributions was his idea of using a spiral spring with a balance wheel instead of a pendulum as the regulating mechanism in a watch, an invention whose authorship was also claimed by Christiaan Huygens, as evidenced by several items in the collection, and by Robert Hooke. Furthermore, appended at the end of the volume is an exceedingly rare treatise of great interest to the history of calculating machines and, by extension, to the history of computing: *Curiositez mathematiques de l’invention du sieur Grillet*, 1673. This is the original and only published edition of this work – an exceptional rarity – containing a description of the author’s arithmetic machine, a rival to Pascal’s. It is illustrated with five figures in the text, engraved on copper. It was in this work that thethe clockmaker René Grillet announced the invention of his mechanical calculator, for which he claimed to have drawn inspiration from Blaise Pascal’s work on calculating machines and to have combined the Pascaline with Napier’s bones so that his machine could perform addition, multiplication and division alike. The news came as a shock to Pascal: it ‘so dampened the enthusiasm with which I had been working on the completion of my model that I dismissed all the workers on the spot’, he wrote. He only resumed his work after receiving a promise of a royal charter and realising that Grillet’s calculating clock did not live up to its promises. Grillet exhibited his machine at fairs in France and the Netherlands between 1673 and 1681 and attempted, without much success, to market it. Only two examples of Grillet’s machine survive today, both housed at the Musée des Arts et Métiers. E. Tomash and M. R. Williams describe how it works as follows: ‘his arithmetic machine [...] consists of a simple box containing a set of Napier’s bones on cylinders similar to those created by Schott (Organum mathematicum, 1668). The lid of this box contained a number of dials that could be used in place of pen and ink to record, and then add up, the partial products. There are no connections between the dials; they simply acted as a register for recording a number. ” Grillet’s other inventions described in his *Curiositez mathematiques* include an “instrument for measuring various changes in the air, comprising a thermometer, a barometer and a hygrometer ’ (modelled on Hubin’s barometer), a ‘breastplate holder’ designed to relieve the rider of the weight of his armour, and finally a fountain, mentioned in a letter from the author to M. de Franchine. The only copy of Grillet’s *Curiositez mathematiques* to have appeared at public auction since 1917 was that from the collection devoted to the history of computing assembled by the American engineer Erwin Tomash (2018, no. 241), in a modern binding, acquired from Roger Gaskell (cat. 9, 1994, no. 20). That copy was described as having [4] preliminary leaves, unlike ours and that held by the BnF (call number V-7212), which contain only [2] preliminary leaves (containing the title with the privilege on the verso, followed by the notice to the reader with a full-page illustration on the verso), with no apparent missing pages. A very valuable collection compiled at the time, certainly by someone close to Hautefeuille who had access to his papers. The complete collection of Hautefeuille’s and Grillet’s memoirs is listed in detail in the table of contents at the beginning of the volume, which is supplemented by 5 handwritten pages. The volume has been paginated continuously by hand, from p. 1 to p. 710. The general title, *Recueil des ouvrages de M. de Haute-Feuille*, has been re-edged at the bottom, with the publisher’s address and the date removed, as in other known copies that were completed after 1692. The title and 4 ff. of the sixth piece from the 1692 provisional collection are missing, but have been replaced by handwritten copies. The seventh piece of the 1692 collection, entitled *Invention nouvelle pour se servir des plus longues lunettes d’approche* (New Invention for Using the Longest Magnifying Glasses), has been replaced by a handwritten summary of its contents entitled *Idée de cette invention* (Idea of this Invention). From the library of the Château de Cormes, at Saint-Cyr-en-Val, near Orléans, with an ex-libris stamp. Hinges and end caps slightly scuffed. Hautefeuille: Hoefer, XXIII, 575 (lists 34 works by the author). – Grillet: Maire, I, 65 – Poggendorff, I, 954 – Tomash & Williams, The Erwin Tomash Library on the History of Computing, 2008, G-85 – M. R. Williams, A History of Computing Technology, Prentice-Hall, 1985, chap. 3.6. Full list of items available on request.
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About the sale Fine antique books – A library in the Languedoc
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Auction time 10/20/2026 at 2:00 PM
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