Henry Moore watermark, titled “Thirteen Standing Figures”, illustrated throughout with full-page drawings on Chater’s Chariot Offset Cartridge paper. Spine darkened, small stain to front cover, foxing to preliminaries, not affecting the signed print, slipcase intact but worn and rubbed. £3,000 [153860] 121 MOUCHOT, Augustin. La Chaleur solaire et ses applications industrielles. 35 Gravures intercalées dans le texte. Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1869 THE FIRST BOOK ON SOLAR POWER First edition, a fine copy in the original wrappers, of the first book explicitly devoted to solar power and its applications, in which Mouchot demonstrated the ability to generate mechanical steam power from solar energy: a milestone discovery in the history of renewable energy. “Solar energy technology saw a burst of new practical applications during the late 19th-century industrial revolution” (Bradford, p. 94). One of the field’s key innovators was the French mathematics teacher and inventor Augustin Mouchot (1825–1912), whose prescient belief that fossil fuels would soon be exhausted prompted an investigation into alternative energy sources. After observing and manipulating the quantity of steam produced during small-scale experiments using axicons to boil water, Mouchot succeeded in designing and patenting the earliest solar-powered engine. He and his assistant Abel Pifre (1852–1928) built several such engines between the 1860s and 1880s, increasing in scale, and received full-time funding from the French government for their research. Mouchot’s experiments culminated in the 1878 Paris Exposition Universelle, “where he presented a variety of devices, including his large ‘Sun Engine’, which operated a printing press on which he printed an edition of his newsletter Journal Soleil . He also displayed a variety of solar cookers and, much to the amazement and delight of the crowd, a solar machine used to create ice. Mouchot’s state-of-the- art devices captured popular imagination, but it was his efforts to develop energy storage that defined his place in history. Mouchot was the first inventor who attempted to use the power of solar radiation to decompose water into its base elements of hydrogen and oxygen and then recombine them to generate
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electricity, much like the fuel-cell technology of today” (Bradford, p. 95). Despite their initial support, the French government eventually dropped Mouchot’s research funding after English coal became more readily and cheaply available. He expressed his frustration: “Eventually industry will no longer find in Europe the resources to satisfy its prodigious expansion . . . Coal will undoubtedly be used up. What will industry do then?” (quoted in Fessler, p. 6). Relatively well-held institutionally, Mouchot’s La Chaleur solaire is infrequently seen on the market in such excellent condition. Octavo. Uncut in original pale green printed wrappers. Housed in a custom dark green paper-covered solander box. 35 engraved diagrams in text, numerous tables. Wrappers lightly soiled and rubbed, paper across spine split in a few places but book block firm and without restoration, contents crisp, first and last few leaves a little foxed, with offset from diagrams throughout. An excellently preserved copy. ¶ Travis Bradford, Solar Revolution: The Economic Transformation of the Global Energy Industry , 2008; David C. Fessler, The Energy Disruption Triangle , 2019. £2,250 [154868]
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