Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - February - 2010 Issue
A Winter Catalogue from Sotheran's
Producing coal gas for light.
Most people are familiar with how electrification lit up the land a century ago. However, another such revolution of light took place in the cities a century earlier. Fredrick Accum wrote about it in this 1815 book: A Practical Treatise on Gas-Light: Exhibiting a Summary Description of the Apparatus and Machinery Best Calculated For Illuminating Streets, Houses, And Manufactories, With Carburetted Hydrogen, or Coal-Gas. Lighting was expanding rapidly in London in 1815, Accum noting there were now over 26 miles of pipes and 4,000 lamps. In an aside, Sotheran notes that five years later, Accum was accused of mutilating books in the library of the Royal Institution and fled England for Germany, where he remained the rest of his life. Undoubtedly, there is a story to go with that. Item 1. £895 (US $1,434).
Here is a title that sounds right up to date: The Google Book, by V.C. Vickers. But wait! The publication date is 1931. Didn't Google start up in the 1990s? Actually, this is a reprint of a book first published in 1913. This is clearly not a book about search engines and websites. It is a children's book about a monster called Google, an image shared by people at places like Microsoft and Yahoo. Vickers' mistake was not taking a trademark out on his monster's name. Item 539. £598 (US $958).
Sotheran's may be reached at 020 7439 6151 or books@sotherans.co.uk. Their website is found at www.sotherans.co.uk.
