Rare, sole edition of geologist, physicist, mathematician and Benedictine monk Andreas Bina's (1724-92) study on the source and nature of electricity. We have found just five copies in US institutions.
Bina is perhaps best known for his study on earthquakes, and as the inventor of a rudimentary seismograph. Earth tremors he understood to be the result of electrical discharge; indeed, among the topics covered in this treatise is that one, on p.55, 'Vis electrica sitne caussa motus Planetarum', along with the contention that electricity and gravitation are of the same nature (Poirier, p.286). 'Bina saw the cause of fire, of light and of electrical matter in what he called elasticity', and vibration, exploring both in the 'new experiments' that form the basis of this treatise.
Bina was in good company in this period - along with Benjamin Franklin, and Joseph Priestley - in advocating that electricity played a role in seismic activity: 'by the second half of the eighteenth century electricity was regarded as a natural agent that could account for several disruptive ‘unusual appearances’. Not only lightning, but also earthquakes, whirlpools and whirlwinds were explained in terms of the motion of the electric fire' (Bertucci, p.89). The study of electricity particularly as it pertained to earthquakes flourished in Italy especially in this period, due in no small part to the frequency of seismic events - with devastating impact - in the Italian states. It was one such earthquake in the Umbrian towns of Gualdo and Nocera in 1751 that prompted Bina's second treatise, attempting to explain the cause of earthquakes in analogy with the Leyden Jar experiment (Fidani, p.26).
Yet 'electricity' was both a scientific pursuit and a source of popular entertainment in this period. 'Electricity was the craze of the eighteenth century', fascinating Enlightenment philosophes and entertaining polite society in equal measure. Experiments, like the Leyden jar - possibly the 'electrical machine' illustrated in the frontispiece here - made for gratifying displays of electrical power to a popular audience, particularly in Italy. An element of that public performance is evident here, with the man conducting his experiment in a room resembling a salon, seated at an ornate table, with heavy drapes and an elaborately tiled floor.
Provenance: Ink ownership stamp of pioneering radiologist Adolf Liechti (1898-1946), head of the Radiological Institute of Bern University.
P. Bertucci, 'Sparks in the dark: the attraction of electricity in the eighteenth century', Endeavour, 31.3, pp.88-93. C. Fidani, 'On electromagnetic precursors of earthquakes: models and instruments', IPHW (June 17, 2006), pp.25-40. J-P. Poirier, 'Electrical earthquakes: a short-lived theory in the eighteenth century', Earth Sciences History (2016) 35 (2): 283–302.
OCLC: US: Harvard, American Philosophical Society Library, Smithsonian, Columbia. UK: BL.
