Élémens de l'architecture navale, ou Traité pratique de la construction des vaisseaux [...] Seconde edition revue, corrigée & augmentée par l'Auteur

4to (250x195 mm). Engraved frontispiece (Ozanne-Chedel), XLIV, 49, II-XXIX, [2], 52-484 pp. and XXIV engraved folding plates. With 10 engraved headpieces after Nicholas Ozanne. Contemporary mottled calf, gilt spine in compartments, red edges (slightly worn and rubbed, top and bottom of spine repaired). Some foxing and staining, occasionally slightly browned, repaired worm tracks to the upper and lower blank margin of a group of leaves at the beginning and at the end of the volume never touching the text, but affecting only the border of two plates, all in all a good copy.

Second enlarged and corrected edition, with the addition of chapter X not present in the first edition of 1752, of the first training manual for aspiring naval constructors, a landmark volume in the literature of naval architecture and shipbuilding.

Duhamel de Monceau, who became inspector of the French navy in 1739, amassed an important collection of model ships, now housed in the Musée de la Marine. Each model was used for teaching purposes. In 1741, he founded the École de Marine in Paris, which later became the École du Génie Maritime. Student shipbuilders, selected from the ports, received a three-year scientific training program that would be crucial to the future construction of ships for the French Royal Navy.

Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\RMSE\004567; Polak, 2860.

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