THE FOUNDING DOCUMENT of INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC COOPERATION. First edition. Paris: Chez la Veuve Pissot, 1745. (Lettre: 1746). Octavo (7 1/2" x 4 3/4", 190mm x 120mm). [Full collation available.] With a folding engraved map (by Guillaume-Nicolas Delahaye) and a folding engraved view. Bound in contemporary cat's-paw calf. On the spine, five raised bands. Title gilt to citron calf in the second panel. Gilt roll to the edges of the boards. Marbled end-papers. All edges of the text-block stained red. Green silk marking ribbon. Head-piece chipped. Damp-stain to the fore of the front board, not affecting the text-block. A little tanned throughout, with some gatherings moderately so. A square and tight example, entirely unsophisticated. Exploration has long surpassed accurate measurement, and has therefore paid the price of imprecision. Christopher Columbus thought he had found eastern Asia because of Ptolemaic calculations of the Earth's diameter, La Salle's expedition to the mouth of the Mississippi was scuppered by imprecise coastal surveys that landed him in Texas -- examples are nearly infinite. Thus it came about that in 1735 the French and Spanish, in the earliest major international scientific undertaking, sent geodetic teams toward the North Pole and the Equator in order to determine the exact circumference of the Earth as well as its shape (i.e., spherical or not), testing claims made by Isaac Newton. The Lapland team settled the latter question first -- viz. that it is an oblate spheroid ("squashed," as Newton postulated; Descartes argued for a prolate or "pointy" sphere). The team sent to Quito -- the name used by the Spanish to refer to the broader territory; the French called it Peru; it is modern Ecuador -- was led by Charles Marie de La Condamine (1701-1774) for the French and Antonio de Ulloa (1716-1795) for the Spanish. La Condamine's surveys over the high plain between Quito (where the Jesuit mission was hospitable, following a fairly disastrous journey) and Cuenca allowed for measurements of the Earth's curvature that allowed not only for an exact calculation of the Earth's circumference and determination of its shape (i.e., how oblate), but also an attempt to create a universal metric of distance based on the periodicity of a pendulum. Thus, the mission can also be said to be the beginning of the establishment of the metric system. The second work, which is often bound with the first (but probably not "issued with it" as some bibliographies and cataloguers suggest), engages with a controversy that arose toward the end of the expedition, with the murder of the mission's surgeon, Dr. Jean Senièrgues, at the hands of a rowdy crowd emergent from a bullfight. The account, followed by excerpts from the trial, adds personal spice to a mission whose scientific, historic, cultural and exploratory consequences must surely rank among the greatest. Purchased at Henri Godts 20 June 2017, lot 224. Alden & Landis 745/115 & 746/109 (Lettre); Borba de Moraes I:378 & 380 (Lettre); Palau 192370-1; Sabin 38484 & 38481 (Lettre).
