De usu astrolabi compendium, schematibus commodissimis illustratum

Author: Johannes Martinus Población (c1486–1557) Year: 1546 Publisher: Jean Barbé for Jacques Gazeau Place: Paris Description: 65 pages with Illustrated throughout with woodcuts and woodcut initials. Small octavo (6 3/4" x 4 1/4") bound in 19th-century vellum with morocco gilt spine label. (Palau 156391; Gunther, Astrolabes, P. 570 & 591; USTC 149570.) Early edition first published in 1519. The only book printed by Jean Barbé who is commonly thought to have also illustrated the book. A famous treatise on the use of the astrolabe by a lecturer in the Collège Royale, first printed in Paris in 1519 by Henri Estienne, and reprinted there at least seven times (the last in 1557). RARE: According to online records, only one complete copy of this work to sell at auction to appear since 1964. Johannes Martinus Población was a prominent Spanish physician, mathematician, and astronomer from Valencia who achieved great fame in 16th-century European humanist circles. His most celebrated work is De usu astrolabi compendium (A Compendium on the Use of the Astrolabe), first published in Paris around 1519. The book served as a highly practical, best-selling 16th-century manual. The first part carefully describes the astronomy tool. The second part details its application in solving real-world problems regarding topography, geometry, seamanship, and geography. An astrolabe is an astronomical instrument dating to ancient times. It serves as a star chart and physical model of the visible half-dome of the sky. Its various functions also make it an elaborate inclinometer and an analog calculation device capable of working out several kinds of problems in astronomy. In its simplest form it is a metal disc with a pattern of wires, cutouts, and perforations that allows a user to calculate astronomical positions precisely. It is able to measure the altitude above the horizon of a celestial body, day or night; it can be used to identify stars or planets, to determine local latitude given local time (and vice versa), to survey, or to triangulate. It was used in classical antiquity, the Byzantine Empire, the Islamic Golden Age, the European Middle Ages and the Age of Discovery for all these purposes. The astrolabe, which is a precursor to the sextant is effective for determining latitude on land or calm seas. Although it is less reliable on the heaving deck of a ship in rough seas, the mariner's astrolabe was developed to solve that problem. Condition: Some minor staining; covers bowed, binding lightly soiled else very good.