The Inventions Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla. With Special Reference to His Work in Polyphase Currents and High Potential Lighting.

Scarce edition of Thomas Commerford Martin's landmark work in the field of electrical engineering, detailing the research and inventions of brilliant inventor, Nikola Tesla. Octavo, original cloth, patterned endpapers, tissue-guarded frontispiece portrait of Tesla, illustrated with numerous diagrams throughout. Presentation copy, inscribed by Nikola Tesla in Serbian Cyrillic on the second free endpaper, "Prijatelju D. Butterfield, Nikola Tesla" which translates as "My friend D. Butterfield, Nikola Tesla." The recipient, Daniel Butterfield, was a Civil War Major General and was the head of one of Cold Spring, New York's first families. Injured on the third day of Gettysburg, he received the Medal of Honor for his actions at Gaines Mill, Virginia, and is credited with adapting the current bugle call into Taps, the most famous bugle call in history. He later became Assistant U.S. Treasurer during the Grant administration and played a major role in the scheme (in which Grant himself participated) that caused the major collapse in the price of gold, on September 24, 1869, known as Black Friday. An inscribed association of this caliber, linking one of the foremost inventors of the modern age with a figure so deeply woven into the fabric of nineteenth-century American history, is of the utmost rarity. The connection between the two men speaks to the social world Tesla moved within during his most productive years, when his laboratory drew the attention of financiers, military men, and public figures alike, and it lends this volume a documentary significance far exceeding that of an ordinary presentation copy. First published in 1894, Commerford's landmark text was reprinted twice that year (this being the third printing which is identical to the previous printings and equally as scarce). In near fine condition. Housed in a custom full morocco clamshell box. From the library of August John Pacini, the head of the Department of Biophysical Research at the Victor X-Ray Corporation, Chicago, with a small presentation slip from his wife laid in. The Pacini provenance is itself fitting, given the institution's pioneering work in the very field of x-ray imaging that Tesla himself helped to inaugurate through his early high-frequency experiments. Exceptionally rare, not only does the present title scarcely come to market, but no other copy inscribed by Tesla has ever appeared in auction records.