First Edition

Spent a really interesting evening up at the Royal Observatory of Edinburgh in a trip organized through the work. The trip was split into three sections the library, a look at (though not through as it is no longer in use and you can’t look through it in any case) the 36 inch reflector telescope when installed in 1930 was the largest in Britain and the third was a short lecture on the highlights of the Solar System and the view further out.

For me the highlight was the library which as the librarian claimed (and I have no reason to doubt her) is one of the fourth best historical astronomical library in the world. She laid out on the table for our perusal books from the Crawford collection, which has some 15,000 items. These ranged from a German language book from the 1470’s to the first edition of Newton Principia that is the image you see here reproduced. There were first editions of Copernicus which was opened at the famous drawing showing the Earth at the centre of the solar system, a first edition of Galileos treatise of 1610 and a book written in Arabic by the best Islamic observer of otpics how worked out exactly how the human eye worked way back in the 16th century.

An absolutely fascinating half hour in most enjoyable trip.