Benjamin Franklin, Experiments and Observations on Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America ...To which are added, letters and papers on philosophical subjects. The whole corrected, methodized, improved, and now first collected into one volume, and illustrated with copper plates. London: For David Henry, and sold by Francis Newbery, 1769.
The 4th edition, but also the most desirable, being the first complete edition of what many consider to be the most important scientific book of eighteenth-century America. Previous editions contained fewer reports and many errors, and Franklin edited this new one-volume edition himself, significantly revising the text and adding numerous of his own letters and notes. The volume includes accounts of his famous kite-key experiment, his design for an efficient fireplace, and a number of scientific findings by his contemporaries. Franklin and Massachusetts governor James Bowdoin, in whose memory Bowdoin College is named, were both founding members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and they communicated regularly about scientific matters of mutual interest. This copy belonged to Gov. Bowdoin.
Loan: American Academy of Arts and Sciences.