SMITH Robert Traité d’optique. Traduit de l’anglais et considérablement augmentée.

DSB, XII, 477 ; DiLaura, no. 486 ; see Becker Collection, 216 (for the first edition 1738) ; Wolf, History of Science, II, p. 171.

First edition of Nicolas-Claude Duval le Roy’s translation, published the same year as the one by Pézénas, and better, according to Quérard “à cause des augmentations considérables que Duval a faites au traité”.

It is supplemented by Remarques nouvelles sur les lunettes achromatiques and a description of the Heliostat. The text is divided into three parts entitled Exposition simple & facile de l’optique ; L’Optique traitée… à l’aide de la géométrie & du calcul ; De la manière de tailler les verres & les miroirs des télescopes.

The work, based essentially on Newton’s theories, is richly illustrated with 67 fold-out engraved plates showing calculations and instruments. Smith’s optics course, based on Newton’s optics, was “probably the most influencial optical text book of the eighteenth century… In turn, its popularity helped to establish the eighteenth-century conviction that light is particulate” (DSB).

“Of the four books [pour l’édition originale] the first deals in a non-technical manner with the fundamental experiments in optics, while the second provides a more formal treatment of the geometrical theory of the subject. Smith studied the problem of spherical aberrations in greater generality than his predecessors, Barrow and Huygens. The third book describes apparatus fro grinding and polishing lenses and specula, and it gives a complete account of the construction, adjustment, and use of the principal optical instruments, while the fourth book gives a history of telescopic discoveries in the heavens” (Wolf).

“Two French translations of Smith’s work appeared in 1767 : Esprit Pézenas’ being more concerned with the theoretical aspects while Duval-le-Roy’s has a heavy emphasis on the practical, lens, and instrument aspects” (DiLaura).

A good copy.