A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism ... Vol I and Vol II ... Third Edition
Oxford: At the Clarendon Press 1904. 2 volumes. Vol 1: xxxii, 506, [1] pages + [1 leaf plate title] + [13 leaves of plates numbered I to XIII]. Vol 2: xxiv, 500 pages + [1 leaf plate title] + [7 leaves plates numbered XIV to XX] + [16 pages ads]. Both volumes publisher's olive green board gilt. Bright clean lettering, a very nice set on the shelf. A later printing of the third edition (the first printing of the third edition was 1892). Near Fine. Cloth. [27713]
The first edition of this famous work was published in 1873 and the second edition in 1881.
"Maxwell once remarked that the aim of his Treatise was not to expound the final view of his electromagnetic theory, which he had developed in a series of five major papers between 1855 and 1868; rather, it was to educate himself by presenting a view of the stage he had reached in his thinking. Accordingly, the work is loosely organized on historical and experimental, rather than systematically deductive lines. It extended Maxwell's ideas beyond the scope of his earlier work in many directions, producing a highly fecund (if somewhat confusing) demonstration of the special importance of electricity to physics as a whole. He began the investigation of moving frames of reference, which in Einstein's hands were to revolutionize physics ; gave proofs of the existence of electromagnetic waves that paved the way for Hertz's discovery of radio waves; worked out connections between the electrical and optical qualities of bodies that would lead to modern solid-state physics; and applied Tait's quaternion formulae to the field equations, out of which Heaviside and Gibbs would develop vector analysis." (Norman, 1466)
Grolier/Horblit #72. Wheeler Gift #1872 ("The first edition of Clerk Maxwell's epoch-making work."). Ekelof, #1163. Norman, #1466 (referring to 1st ed, second issue). [ all referring to the first edition ]
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