Engineering & Technology

(European Space Agency) Bjurstedt, Hilding | Biology and Medicine in Space

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First and only edition of this uncommon volume on the biological research opportunities offered by Spacelab, the modular laboratory planned for the Space Shuttle as a joint project of NASA and the ESA. The lab was designed as a collection of components that could be used in various configurations according to the needs of each flight. There were twenty-two major Spacelab missions between 1983 and 1998, with individual components flying on a number of other missions.

  The contents explain the areas of opportunity for biologists and medical researchers in orbit, including human calcium metabolism, the cardiovascular system, the senses, and the musculoskeletal system, cell and developmental biology, microbiology, botany, radiobiology, the effects of cosmic rays on organisms, the role of gravity in organogenesis and behaviour, bioengineering, the origin of life on earth, and whether life can exist in other parts of the universe.
  
  As the introduction explains, this volume represents “an invitation to biological, medical, and behavioural investigators in Europe to participate in the planning and execution of experiments in the Spacelabs of the 1980s. These manned, earth-orbiting laboratories will offer a working environment which is biologically unique in its absence of effective gravity, a condition which cannot be produced on earth. Spacelab heralds a new era of opportunity for investigating problems of a fundamental nature, making possible a better understanding of life processes on earth”.

• ...Research Opportunities offered by Spacelab. Invitation to European Investigators. Edited by Hilding Bjurstedt, First Chairman of ESA Life-Sciences Working group (1974-1977). Paris: European Space Agency, August 1979.

  Tall quarto, 56 pages. Original yellow wrappers printed in black and white, stapled. Illustrations and diagrams throughout the text. With two copies of the original order form loosely inserted, one having been cut off at the halfway line for posting. Wrappers lightly rubbed and toned at the edges, with some mild spotting to the lower edge of the upper wrapper. Excellent condition.

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Adams, D. R. | Practical Aircraft Stress Analysis

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition, first impression of this uncommon book, written “with the object of providing a simple and practical study of the methods used in the stress analysis of aircraft components”. The text is based on lectures delivered by the author at the de Havilland Aeronautical Technical School, and “advanced knowledge of statics, mechanics and aerodynamics is not required” (preface).

• London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1936.

  Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine and upper board in black. 3 folding charts, diagrams throughout the text. 4-page integral publisher’s ads plus another 16-page set of ads. Spine rolled, a light spotting to the endpapers and edges of the text block but contents clean, a little creasing to the upper corners of pages 109 through 118, faint musty smell. A very good copy.

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Babcock & Wilcox Co. | Dampf. Dessen Erzeugung und Verwendung nebst katalog der Fabrikate

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• “Steam, Its Production and Use, together with a Catalogue of Manufactures”. A very attractive 1893 German language catalogue of the pioneering power firm Babcock & Wilcox, the first edition of which was published in 1875.

  This 180-page catalogue is heavily illustrated with both photos and engravings. In addition to specifications for the firm’s boiler models, it includes a detailed overview of steam power and the operations of different types of boilers, as well as information about the company and a complete list of the boilers they have already installed. Loosely inserted is a single leaf advert for the Babcock & Wilcox boiler “with Colonial Furnace, suitable for burning green bagasse”, and three charming, pictorial advertising flyers for equipment produced by the Bopp & Reuther firm of Mannheim, Germany.

  Babcock & Wilcox was founded as a manufacturer of industrial steam boilers in Providence, Rhode Island in 1867, and has remained a leader in power generation to the present day. Among their many achievements have been: the supply of a boiler for Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory in 1878; the powering of America’s first electricity-producing central generating station in Philadelphis in 1881; supplying the equipment for Edison’s Pearl Street Station in New York City, the worlds first public electrical utility, which opened in 1882 (Edison would later write that Babcock & Wilcox manufactured “the best boiler God has permitted man yet to make”); the supply of boilers to power US and British naval vessels in the 1890s; the production of electricity for New York’s first subway; the construction of the water pipe system at the Hoover Dam; and the supply of weapons components for the Manhattan Project and equipment for the world’s first nuclear-powered sub, the USS Nautilus.

• ...der Babcock & Wilcox Co. 30 Cortlandt Street, New York und von Babcock & Wilcox, Limited 114 Newgare Street, London. New York & London: Babcock & Wilcox, March, 1893.

  Tall quarto. Original brown cloth blocked in gilt and blind, all edges red, floral patterned endpapers. Lithographic half title. Engravings and illustrations from photos throughout. Ownership ink stamp of Edmund Prechtel to front pastedown and title, ownership signature of the same to the front blank. Cloth a little rubbed and spotted with some scattered loss of size, small tear at the base of the spine panel, contents faintly toned. Excellent condition.

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Bacon, Gertrude | Memories of Land and Sky

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• Details & Condition

• First edition of the memoirs of the first Englishwoman to fly. Inscribed by the author, using her married name, on the title page, “(Gertrude Foggitt) – Sept. 1936”.

  Gertrude Bacon (1874-1949) was the daughter of the scientist and balloonist Rev. John Maczenzie Bacon, and she accompanied him on most of his expeditions. "Bacon became fascinated by flying and as a journalist reported on the various airships and planes being built." In August 1904 she became the first woman to fly in an airship, being a passenger in the near-disastrous first flight of an 84-foot-long ship designed by Stanley Spencer. "From 22 to 29 August, 1909, the world's first aviation meeting was held at Rheims, France. Bacon was determined to go for a ride in one of the new machines. On the last day she was taken up in a Farman plane, squeezed between the radiator and the pilot. She described the takeoff: 'The motion was wonderfully smooth - smoother yet - and then - ! Suddenly there had come into it a new indescribable quality - a lift - a lightness - a life!' Thus she became the first Englishwoman to fly" (International Women in Science: A Biographical Dictionary, p. 15). Bacon flew on several other occasions, and became the first ever hydroplane passenger at Lake Windermere in 1912. Bacon became Gertrude Foggitt in 1929, when she married fellow botanist and chemist Thomas Jackson Foggitt.

• ...With Twenty-Four Illustrations. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1928.

  Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine gilt and to upper board in blind. 8-page publisher’s ads at rear. Portrait frontispiece and 15 plates from black and white photographs. Spine cocked, cloth a little rubbed at the extremities, two shallow dents in the upper board, lower corner bumped, some spotting to the contents, particularly the early leaves, and edges of the text block. Very good condition.

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Baxter, James Finney | Scientists Against Time

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• Details & Condition

• First edition, first printing of the Pulitzer Prize-winning account of Allied technological development during the Second World War. Inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To Betty Way Brown, with best wishes, James P. Baxter 3rd”.

  Author James F. Baxter (1893-1975) was a historian and for more than twenty years the popular president of Williams College in Massachusetts. During the Second World War he served as research coordinator of information (1941-1943) and director of the Office of Strategic Services (1942-1943), and the work for this book was undertaken during the latter part of the war while he served as the historical researcher for the Office of Scientific Research and Development. It includes chapters on submarine and air warfare, radar and LORAN, rocketry, proximity fuses, fire control technologies, new explosives and propellants, antimalarials, blood transfusion, penicillin, aviation medicine, and the Manhattan Project, among others.

• ...With Illustrations. An Atlantic Monthly Press Book. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1946.

  Octavo. Original grey cloth, titles and design to spine and upper board blocked in red and blue, top edge dyed red. Frontispiece and 33 double-sided plates from photographs, 3 illustrations within the text. Spine toned, cloth slightly rubbed, endpapers tanned, light spotting to the edges of the text block and occasionally to the contents.

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Bowman, Martie | Calendar for 1936 depicting pilot Martie Bowman in her WACO INF biplane.

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• A remarkable piece of early aviation ephemera, this calendar was produced as a Christmas greeting by the early female aviator Marguerite (Martie) Bowman (1901-1985) and her husband Leslie, also a pilot. It depicts Bowman flying in her WACO INF biplane, registration number NC625Y, in formation with two others, and includes portraits of Bowman, her husband, and their daughter Larnie Bowman Allen. We have learned from one of the Bowmans’ grandchildren that Larnie joined the family profession, becoming a wing-walker at eight and soloing at twelve.

  The Bowmans established an aviation business together and, during the 1920s, 30s and 40s, Martie Bowman ferried planes from factories and regularly participated in air races. She competed in the 1930 Women’s Dixie Air Derby from Washington D. C. to Chicago, and won the Women’s International Air Derby of 1934 and the two-day women’s championship Shell Trophy Cup at Long Beach, California. In her biography of fellow pilot Phoebie Omlie, Janann Sherman recounts that during the Dixie Derby Bowman selflessly assisted Omlie, who had an injury, by waking up each hour during the night to apply medicated drops to her eyes (Sherman, Walking on Air, p. 65).

  The Bowman’s papers are held at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, and as of 2001 two of Martie Bowman’s planes were still registered as flight-worthy with the FAA.

• [Olympia, WA], 1935.

  Silver gelatin composite photograph (250 x 200 mm) with small tear-off monthly calendar for 1936. Inscribed “Merry Christmas, The Bowmans”. A few minor nicks and spots at the edges. Excellent, unused condition.

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Burr, G. D. [George Dominicus] | Instructions in Practical Surveying, Topographical Plan Drawing, and Sketching Ground Without Instruments

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• Second edition with additions, first published in 1839. An attractively bound prize copy awarded by the Royal Military College at Sandhurst to Henry George White for “attention to, and progress in, military drawing”. With White’s later bookplate giving his rank as Major General.

  Author George Dominicus Burr (d. 1855), was for forty years an esteemed professor of military surveying at the Royal Military College, and it is presumably he himself who presented this prize volume. The contents cover practical surveying and military drawing for students with no prior knowledge of the art, “confidently recommending to [them] a practice founded upon long experience, and certain in its results, within the limits we have assigned to it” (introduction).

  The recipient, Major General Henry George White (1835 - 1906) “had a distinguished career in the British Army serving at the Crimean War (1854-56), in the Indian Mutiny (1858-59), in Cyprus (1878-79) and Bechanaland in South Africa in the 1880s” (Irish National Inventory of Architectural Heritage ).

• ...With Plates and Woodcuts. Second Edition.

  London: John Murray, 1847.

  Octavo (183 x 115 mm). Contemporary prize binding of green morocco, spine gilt in compartments, title, single-line rules, elaborate crests to boards, acorn and oak leaf roll to turn-ins, and all edges gilt, marbled endpapers. 5 folding plates on tissue, diagrams within the text. Prize and ownership bookplates to the front endpapers. Binding lightly rubbed with a few mild scuffs and some light wear at the extremities, a little faint spotting to the folding plates. Very good condition.

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Cavallo, Tiberius | The Theory and Practice of Aerostation

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition of the first English-language scientific treatise on ballooning. This copy includes Cavallo’s uncommon 1793 treatise on the mother-of-pearl micrometer he invented, and is extra-illustrated with three plates from an unknown edition of Saint-Fond’s book on the Montgolfier brothers, Description des Expériences de la Machine Aérostatique (first published 1783-84).

  In his early twenties Tiberius Cavallo (1749-1809) moved from Italy to London, where “he moved easily in cultivated circles and developed an interest in electrical experiments, in particular on atmospheric electricity. His experimental skill and inventiveness brought him quickly to the notice of some of the leading natural philosophers of the day. He designed an ingenious electrometer for detecting and measuring the smallest quantity of electricity in the atmosphere, and in 1777 he published A Complete Treatise on Electricity in Theory and Practice with Original Experiments... The work was a compendium of contemporary understanding of electricity, and in it Cavallo emphasized the importance of experiments for the advancement of natural knowledge and identified possible directions for further investigation, both practical and theoretical. The Treatise was well received, and it earned him a high reputation within the Royal Society of London, of which he was elected a fellow on 9 December 1779” (ODNB). Cavallo was a talented experimentalist and inventor; he undertook serious investigations into topics such as the medical uses of electricity and the physical properties of air and other gases. He invented and improved on a large number of instruments, and also acted as an international agent for London instrument makers. Serving as the Bakerian Lecturer of the Royal Society between 1782 and 1792, he was a skilled science communicator whose books and lectures were well-received by the public as well as his peers.

  The History and Practice of Aerostation contains a detailed history of ballooning and aerostatic experiments, including early unmanned flights, the work of the Montgolfier brothers, Pilatre de Rozier, and a large number of other amateur and professional experimenters. The second half of the volume covers the theory of ballooning with sections on the nature of air, the construction of balloons, the mechanisms for sending them aloft and bringing them back to Earth, scientific experiments and observations that can be made during a voyage, and a short essay on the uses to which the new invention may be put in the future. “It can hardly be expected that, in the present state of the subject, all, or even a few, of the uses, to which the aerostatic machines may be applied, should be precisely known, since the decisive proof of experience has not yet been sufficiently shewn” (p. 320).

  The second text bound into this volume describes one of Cavallo’s inventions, a “simple and valuable” micrometer, for making small measurements while using a microscope or telescope. “The Mother-of-pearl micrometer is a very simple, and at the same time, a very accurate instrument of the kind. It consists of a small semitransparent scale or slip of Mother-of-pearl, about the 20th part of an inch broad, and of the thickness of common writing paper, divided into a number of equal parts by parallel lines, every fifth and tenth of which is a little longer than the rest” (pp. 3-4).

• [Bound together with] Description, and Use, of the Telescopical Mother-of-Pearl Micrometer. London: printed for the author and sold by C. Dilly, P. Elmsly, and J. Stockdale, 1785. And London: printed for the author and sold by C. Dilly, 1793. 

  Octavo (208 x 130 mm). Contemporary tree calf handsomely rebacked to style, spine gilt in compartments, red morocco label. 8 page index and author’s ad. The Micrometer being 41 pages with two leaves of preliminaries. 2 engraved folding plates, extra-illustrated with 3 plates from an unknown edition of Faujas de Saint-Fond’s book on the Montgolfier brothers, Description des Expériences de la Machine Aérostatique. Armorial bookplate. Professionally rebacked and with the corners and edges of the boards restored, occasional light spotting to the edges of the textblock and the contents, a little toning and offsetting of the plates, mostly affecting the plates introduced from the Saint-Fond, but generally clean and fresh. A very good copy.

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Chappuis, Paul Emile | Carte de visite depicting the Crystal Palace in Sydenham

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• A lovely carte de visite depicting the Crystal Palace in its permanent home at Sydenham sometime after 1856, when the Brunel water towers, one of which is visible in the photo, were erected. The structure was originally built to house the Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations (the Great Exhibition) in Hyde Park in 1851. Popular acclaim saw it preserved and reopened in Sydenham in 1854, but it was destroyed by a fire in 1936. This card bears the ticket of photographer Paul Emile Chappuis (1816-1887), whose Fleet Street studio operated between 1859 and 1871. Chappuis was also an inventor who held several patents on reflectors that would allow light into buildings that would otherwise require gaslights during the day. The firm that he set up to manufacture them was in operation until the Second World War.

• London: Chappuis, [between 1859 and 1871].

  Cabinet card (103 x 62 mm). Photographer’s ticket to the verso. Just a couple of tiny spots. Excellent condition.

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Foxwell, A. K. | Munition Lasses

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition, first impression of this account of women munition workers at the Woolwich Arsenal between July 1916 and January 1917. Uncommon, particularly in the dust jacket.

  Author Agnes Kate Foxwell (1872-1957) was a graduate of University College London, a teacher at Cheltenham Ladies College, and active in the suffrage movement. In 1914 she joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment and worked as a Red Cross nurse in a number of military hospitals, primarily in London but also Rouen (https://vad.redcross.org.uk/record?rowKey=78412).
  
  Shortly after women were first hired as employees of the Woolwich Arsenal in early 1916 she was recruited as Principal Overlooker in Danger Buildings, supervising employees in the most dangerous sections of the factory. The present volume describes her role and the perilous, exhausting, and low-paid work undertaken by women munition workers. It covers a wide variety of factory roles and also describes social life among the workers, but some technological details were omitted for national security reasons. The book is illustrated with four pages of photographs depicting the Woolwich employees, primarily in formal group shots, including several in costumes for a Joan of Arc pageant.

• ...Six Months as Principal Overlooker in Danger Buildings. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1917.

  Octavo. Original light blue cloth, titles to spine and upper board in black. With the dust jacket. 2 double-sided plates from photographs. Spine rolled and faded with a mild crease, a little dulling and spotting of the cloth, contents toned with occasional spotting. Contemporary gift inscription to the front free endpaper. A very good copy in the rubbed and dulled jacket with three small chips to the spine panel and the lower edge of the upper panel, as well as a short closed tear and some nicks and creasing.

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Frazer, R. A & W. J. Duncan. | The Flutter of Aeroplane Wings

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition of this key work on aeronautical engineering, widely known as “The Flutter Bible”. Scarce, with only 15 institutional copies recorded in WorldCat and one in auction records, at Dominic Winter in 2011.

  The term “flutter” refers to sustained oscillations of the structures of planes that can damage or destroy them. The first documented case occurred in 1916, affecting the tail of a Handley Page O/400 bomber, and by the 1920s flutter was a major area of aeronautics research.

  “At the NPL [National Physical Laboratory] work was initiated in 1925 by R. A. Frazer; he was joined in the following year by W. J. Duncan. Two years later, in August 1928, they published a monograph, ‘The Flutter of Aeroplane Wings’, R&M 1155. This slim volume, of just over 200 pages, has been known ever since as ‘The Flutter Bible’, and understandably so... it is quite astonishing in its completeness. Frazer and Duncan solved the flutter problem, in all its essentials, laying down the principles on which flutter investigations have been based ever since.” (Collar, “The First Fifty Years of Aeroelasticity”, Aerospace, February 1978, pp. 14-15).

  Frazer and Duncan’s research programme “made use of simplified wind tunnel models to identify and study phenomena, gave well-considered, cautiously detailed design recommendations, and indicated broad programs required for measurement of aerodynamic derivatives. They introduced an important concept of ‘semirigid modes’ which greatly simplifies the theoretical analysis... In effect this concept enables the problem to be handled by ordinary differential equations rather than by much less tractable partial differential equations” (Garrick & Reed, “Historical Development of Aircraft Flutter”, Journal of Aircraft vol. 18, no. 11, Nov 1981, pp. 900-901).

  Reference: Bibliography of Vibration and Flutter of Aircraft Wings, US Works Progress Administration, 1937. Bibliography of Aeronautics, National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 1930.

• ...Aeronautical Research Committee. Reports and Memoranda No. 1155. (Ae. 320.) August 1928. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1929.

  Sextodecimo. Original grey cloth, titles to spine and upper board in black. 3 plates from photographs, 2 double-sided plates of charts, charts and figures throughout the text. Tail of spine and lower corner bumped, cloth a little rubbed and scuffed, contents faintly toned. A very good copy.

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Frazer, R. A. & W. J. Duncan | The Flutter of Monoplanes, Biplanes and Tail Units

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition of the sequel to The Flutter of Aeroplane Wings (1929), widely considered the “Bible of Flutter”. Scarce; WorldCat locates only nine institutional copies, and auction records include one copy sold at Dominic Winter in 2011.

  The term “flutter” refers to sustained oscillations of the structures of planes that can damage or destroy them. The first documented case occurred in 1916, affecting the tail of a Handley Page O/400 bomber, and by the 1920s flutter was a major area of aeronautics research.

  “At the NPL [National Physical Laboratory] work was initiated in 1925 by R. A. Frazer; he was joined in the following year by W. J. Duncan. Two years later, in August 1928, they published a monograph, ‘The Flutter of Aeroplane Wings’, R&M 1155. This slim volume, of just over 200 pages, has been known ever since as ‘The Flutter Bible’, and understandably so... it is quite astonishing in its completeness. Frazer and Duncan solved the flutter problem, in all its essentials, laying down the principles on which flutter investigations have been based ever since.” (Collar, “The First Fifty Years of Aeroelasticity”, Aerospace, February 1978, pp. 14-15).

  Frazer and Duncan’s research programme “made use of simplified wind tunnel models to identify and study phenomena, gave well-considered, cautiously detailed design recommendations, and indicated broad programs required for measurement of aerodynamic derivatives. They introduced an important concept of ‘semirigid modes’ which greatly simplifies the theoretical analysis... In effect this concept enables the problem to be handled by ordinary differential equations rather than by much less tractable partial differential equations” (Garrick & Reed, “Historical Development of Aircraft Flutter”, Journal of Aircraft vol. 18, no. 11, Nov. 1981, pp. 900-901).
  
  Reference: Bibliography of Vibration and Flutter of Aircraft Wings, US Works Progress Administration, 1937.

  Bibliography of Vibration and Flutter of Aircraft Wings, US Works Progress Administration, 1937. Bibliography of Aeronautics, National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 1930.

• ...(A Sequel to R. & M. 1155). Aeronautical Research Committee Reports and Memoranda No. 1255 (Ae 404.) January 1931. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1931.

  Sextodecimo. Original grey cloth, titles to spine and upper board in black. 8 plates of which 4 are double-sided. Slight rubbing at the extremities, contents faintly toned. An excellent, fresh copy.

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Girvin, Brenda | Munition Mary

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• Details & Condition

• SOLD First edition, first impression of this important First World War adventure novel by the lesbian author Brenda Girvin (1884-1970). Uncommon with the decorative publisher’s cloth in such nice condition.

  During the First World War “female authors were quick to take advantage of the changing social climate in which women were taking up the opportunities of more and varied work outside the home and for the war effort. The heroines, albeit fewer in number than their male counterparts, worked on the land, in the factories, and as army and ambulance drivers. Brenda Girvin’s eponymous heroine in Munition Mary (1918) single-handedly foils a German spy-ring attempting to sabotage the newly employed female labor force in the munitions factory owned by the fierce Sir William. Sir William is so prejudiced against women working outside the home that he will apparently walk up several flights of stairs rather than get into a lift operated by a woman. Mary’s colleagues initially blame the sabotage on Sir William himself, but the loyal Mary fights to prove his innocence and ultimately captures the Germans. Throughout however Girvin is at pains to let her readers know that Mary lost  none of her ‘womanliness’ despite taking up men’s work” (Kennedy, The Children’s War: British Children’s Experience of the Great War, Goldsmith’s College PhD thesis, p. 218).

  Girvin and her partner Monica Cosens (1888-1973) both served in the Women’s Royal Naval Service during the First World War, and Girvin dedicated this volume to her “munition friend” the artist Margaret Kemp-Welch (1874-1968), who presumably worked in one of the factories at the same time. Girvin and Cosens had extensive careers as children’s authors, often working together on books and plays. Together they built the remarkable vernacular-style holiday cottage Cock Rock in North Devon, which was designed by the prominent architect and landscape designer Oliver Hill (1887-1968) (Kepp, “Gardens by Oliver Hill in North Devon”, Journal of the Devon Gardens Trust, March 2020).

• ...Illustrated by Gertrude Demain Hammond. London: Humphrey Milford, 1918.

  Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine and upper board gilt, elaborate illustrations to spine and upper board in black, yellow, and several shades of blue. Colour frontispiece and 3 plates. Sunday School prize bookplate awarded in 1927, the bookplate manufactured for Brown’s Bookstore in Hull. Small manuscript note on 1996 purchase loosely inserted. Spine rolled, lightly rubbed at the extremities with just a little loss of size from the lower corners of the boards, endpapers partially toned. A very good copy.

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Glauert, H. | Wind Tunnel Interference on Wings, Bodies and Airscrews

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• Details & Condition

• First edition, first impression of this significant work on the interference of wind tunnel walls on the planes being tested.

  Author Hermann Glauert (1892-1934) was a prominent British aerodynamicist specialising in aerofoil and propeller theory. He served as the Principal Scientific Officer of the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough and also wrote the important text The Elements of Aerofoil and Airscrew Theory, published in 1926.

  This copy contains the library stamp of the Castle Bromwich Aircraft Factory, which was founded in 1936 as part of the Shadow Factory plan to quickly ramp up aircraft production in case of war. It became the largest and most successful plant of its type during the Second World War, being the largest Spitfire factory in the UK and also producing Lancaster bombers. Immediately after hostilities ended it was taken over by car body specialists Fisher & Ludlow, and is still in operation today, now manufacturing vehicles for Jaguar Land Rover.

• ...Aeronautical Research Committee Reports and Memoranda No. 1566 (T.3434). September 1933. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1933.

  Octavo. Original grey cloth, titles to spine and upper board in black. 11 double-sided plates. Ink stamp of the Castle Bromwich Aircraft Factory Technical Library. Boards rubbed, marked, and bumped with two knocks on the edge of the lower board, a little spotting to the endpapers, musty smell. Very good condition.

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Hawker Siddeley Aviation Ltd. | Design Handbook Volume I General [&] A.300B Supplement

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• Details & Condition

• Due to this item's weight, extra shipping costs will apply.
  
  

  A rare copy of the Hawker Siddeley Design Handbook, published in 1969 in preparation for work on the revolutionary Airbus A300, the world’s first wide-body, twin-engine jet airliner, together with a copy of the 300-page Supplement specifically for that aircraft. As explained by Director and Chief Engineer J. P. Smith in the introduction, this handbook was distributed to “Design Engineering staff at Hatfield and Chester” as well as “all HSA design departments to enable those concerned to study the content in preparation for its use with new projects. The A 300B and the HS 144 [possibly an early version of the British Aerospace 146 short-haul airliner] will be the first projects to which the new Handbook will apply at Hatfield and Chester” while current handbooks would “remain in use for Trident, HS 125, Comet, and other earlier projects”.

  The Handbook itself includes every annual amendment issued up to 1978, and the separate A300B Supplement also includes the twelve amendments up to 1970. Handbooks of this type are rare on the market, and we can locate no copies in institutional collections or at auction. As the introduction states, they were considered company property, to be returned “when not required or should an individual be leaving the service of the Company”. Their size and unwieldy format also made it less likely that copies would be preserved in such nice condition. With design handbooks of this type it was standard procedure for outdated sections to be destroyed and replaced with each amendment, and it appears that this was done here, as a number of different issues are represented throughout (as indicated in the footer of each page).

  The Hawker Siddeley Aircraft Company was founded in 1935 by the combination of Armstrong Siddeley and Hawker Aircraft, then the two largest British aircraft manufacturing firms. Hawker Siddeley was one of the most important manufacturing firms of the Second World War, producing the famed Hawker Hurricanes. Following the war they moved into a variety of military and civilian markets, including guided missile, nuclear propulsion, electrical engineering, railway, and space technologies. Along with the Airbus A300, their most well-known post-war products were the HS Harrier, the first vertical take-off and landing jet aircraft, and the world’s first commercial jet airliner, the de Havilland Comet.

• ...Copy No. 232. [Kingston upon Thames]: Hawker Siddeley Aviation Ltd., 1969-78.

  Handbook approximately 600 pages. Originally issued unbound with holes for a ring binder, this copy bound by the original owner with turquoise ribbon. The separate A300 Supplement being approximately 328 pages and bound with a metal clip. Some double page chart in both volumes. A little spotting to the top leaf and edges of text block of the handbook, some small marks and scuffs to the outer leaes of the Supplement. Excellent condition.

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Marchant, Bessie | A Girl Munition Worker

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• Details & Condition

• SOLD First edition of this important First World War adventure novel by the prolific children’s writer sometimes described as “the girls’ G. A. Henty”.

  Bessie Marchant Comfort (1862-1941) spent her entire life in England but wrote close to 150 novels set in locations around the world. Her protagonists are mainly young women who take on masculine-coded traits and roles, overcoming fear and uncertainty to save the day (and often male characters) through intelligence, courage, and self-control. In A Girl Munition Worker the heroine, Deborah, is employed in a munitions factory and becomes involved in the case of a German spy, heroically foiling a Zeppelin raid against the facility by shooting the agent guiding the airship from the ground.
  
  “British and American wartime girls’ books unabashedly celebrate opportunities for middle-class heroines to take on exciting new jobs outside the home: as munition factory workers in Brenda Girvin’s Munition Mary (1918) and Bessie Marchant’s A Girl Munition Worker (1916), or as farm laborers in Marchant’s A Transport Girl in France (1919). Within these workplace settings, the protagonists perform additional heroic service by identifying and capturing German spies. As intrepid spy catchers, girl heroines are able to contribute to the war effort by engaging, like their soldier counterparts, with the enemy, but they make use of what are portrayed as some distinctly feminine weapons: curiosity and intuition. At the same time, by hunting down and confronting dangerous spies, the young female protagonists in these books demonstrate a level of bravery not typically associated with femininity at that time. Ironically, these moments of gender-bending are often followed by scenes in which the girls fall in a faint, clearly overcome by the magnitude of what they have done… The activities of these characters, both as working girls and as spy catchers, clearly challenge the notion that a girl’s or woman’s world must be limited to the domestic sphere. At the same time, the radicality of this message is tempered by frequent reminders of the heroine’s femininity, beauty, and physical and emotional fragility” (Redmann, “Girls Reading the Great War”, Women Writing War, 2018).

• ...The Story of a Girl’s Work during the Great War. Illustrated by J. E. Sutcliffe. London: Blackie and Son Limited, [c. 1916].
  
  Octavo. Original grey cloth blocked in black, blue, and yellow, grey coated endpapers. Frontispiece and 5 plates. Bookseller’s ticket of William Pile of Sutton and Wallington. Spine rolled, cloth rubbed with slight wear at the tips, spotting to the edges of the text block and title page and occasionally to the contents, small raised spot on the frontispiece. Very good condition.

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Martin Marietta Corp. | Pershing Weapon System

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• First edition of a rare promotional booklet for the original Pershing missile system (MGM-31A). WorldCat locates only one institutional copy, at the US Army Field Artillery School in Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

  Pershing was conceived during the late 1950s as a nuclear weapon system to be deployed in defense of NATO countries on the European continent. Testing occurred during 1960 and 1961, and production began in 1962. “As the successor to the Redstone [ballistic missiles], the Pershing inherited the Redstone’s mission of acting as a forward-based SRBM [short-range ballistic missile] that could strike critical targets in Warsaw Pact nations from U.S. bases in NATO-aligned nations. Unlike the Redstone, the Pershing 1 used solid fuel which could be stored indefinitely inside the missile, eliminating an otherwise lengthy fueling process prior to launch. Additionally, the missile’s size and weight made it easier to transport. Due to these factors, the missiles were valued for their survivability and short launch time. The only significant factor that slowed launch time for the Pershing 1 was that, due to the missile’s length, the warhead was carried on a separate vehicle and attached once a launch order had been received” (”MGM-31 Pershing 1”, Missile Threat website, the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies).

  This booklet describes and illustrates the technical aspects of the Pershing system, describing it as “containing all the elements necessary to complete a deep penetration, nuclear fire mission... a missile, automatic checkout and pre-flight programming equipment, an electrical power station, a small portable launch platform, and communications equipment” that would allow it to be a self-sustaining and highly responsive in unstable battlefield conditions. Eight glossy photographs depict a Pershing missile in the launcher, at the moment of launch, the equipment carrier, erector-launcher, programmer and power stations, and the separate warhead vehicle. They are accompanied by stylish technical drawings and blueprints that give an idea of scale and functioning.

• Orlando, FL: Martin Company, [1965].

  32-page booklet, quarto. Original grey wrappers printed in black and gold, plastic comb binding. Photographic frontispiece and 7 plates from photos on glossy photo stock, 3 double-sided plates of blueprints, illustrations within the text. Just a little rubbing and creasing at the extremities of the wrappers. An excellent copy.

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Mason, A. | Cabinet card depicting a female cyclist.

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• Details & Condition

•  Cabinet card depicting a female cyclist. 
  
  The cabinet card, essentially a larger version of the carte de visite, was a popular format for portraiture from the 1860s until the early years of the 20th century, when Brownies and other affordable cameras made it possible for people to take their own photographs. Meanwhile, the introduction of the safety bicycle in the 1890s had created a wave of interest in the sport, and women were especially keen on the freedom and power they offered. Some suffragettes argued that they could help upend traditional gender relations, and they contributed significantly to the reform of women’s dress. Suffragettes or not, cabinet cards photographs of women posing with their bicycles - usually dressed to the nines as in this example - became popular. The photographer who created this example, A. Mason, is not recorded, but his studio was in Herne Hill, and one wonders if he did a good trade with the cyclists using the velodrome. A charming record of women’s cycling history.

• Herne Hill, London: A. Mason, c. 1900-1910.

  Cabinet card (165 x 108 mm). Gold bevelled edges. Remnants of an old sticker or ticket next to the photographer’s address. A few tiny spots and a minor scratch. Very good condition.

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Max Rigo Selling Company | International Aviation Meet. Grant Park Chicago. Panoramic Post Card.

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• A striking, oversized panoramic postcard photomontage depicting one of the most important aviation events prior to the First World War, the August 1911 International Aviation Meet at Grant Park in Chicago.

  The Chicago meet was the largest airshow held up to that time, only eight years after the first powered flight by the Wright Brothers. Over the course of nine days thirty-three amateur and professional aviators competed for cash prizes totalling just over $100,000, watched by an estimated 300,000 spectators. Lincoln Beachey, the world’s premiere stunt pilot, set a world altitude record of 11,642 feet and two pilots, William R. Badger and St. Croix Johnstone, died in crashes.

  This postcard is a fantastical composite image depicting the airshow, incorporating photographs of the lakefront buildings, Grant Park, railway tracks, and crowd shots, and all merging into painted backdrops and “crowds”. Fourteen planes are visible in the sky, and while most are painted, a few may have originally have been photographs. Another three are depicted on the ground or taking off, surrounded by people. This copy of the card was posted by “Laurie” of 1859 Sedgwick St, which is adjacent to Lincoln Park on the north side of town, and the recipient was “Miss Florence Ort” of Defiance Ohio. Laurie has additionally annotated the image, labelling for her friend Michigan Avenue, the famous Blackstone Hotel, opened just two years previously, the Auditorium theatre, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

• Chicago, IL: Max Rigo, 1911.

  Folding panoramic postcard (290 x 195 mm). Professionally mounted, glazed, and framed using archival materials. Composite photographic image depicting the Chicago lakefront and early planes. The sender’s and receiver’s details filled out in black ink, and four landmarks noted on the image in the same hand. Marks from stamp, some toning and spotting of the verso, creasing and wear, particularly near the original folds (which are fragile) and at the corners and slightly affecting the image, small tape repair to one corner on the verso. Very good condition.

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Mead Cycle Company | Crusader Bicycles advertising booklet

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• An attractive, early 20th-century advertising booklet for Crusader Bicycles by the Mead Cycle Company of Chicago. It includes two wonderful chromolithographs, including a double page spread depicting the Advance Model Crusader de Luxe for $19.85 and the Crusader Coaster-Brake Special for $17.80. The upper cover advertises their policies, including free shipping, a free 30 day trial, and five year guarantee, and there are also ads for a variety of accessories. “What more do you want in a wheel? What greater assurance could you ask in buying a bicycle? We are putting our priceless reputation behind these two latest Crusader Models and behind the unqualified statement that when you buy one you are making the best bicycle selection and the wisest bicycle investment that anyone could possibly make”. Mead was one of Chicago’s first bicycle manufacturers, beginning operations in 1889 and selling nationally through mail order catalogues such as this one.

• Chicago: the Hollister Press for the Mead Cycle Company, [early 20th-century].

  12 page advertising booklet, stapled self-wraps. Colour and two-tone chromolithographs. 2 horizontal creases from folding, some spotting and dulling to the cover. Very good condition.

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Ower, E. | Some Aspects of the Mutual Interference Between Parts of Aircraft

• Overview
• Details & Condition

• First edition, first impression.

  This copy contains the library stamp of the Castle Bromwich Aircraft Factory, which was founded in 1936 as part of the Shadow Factory plan to quickly ramp up aircraft production in case of war. It became the largest and most successful plant of its type during the Second World War, being the largest Spitfire factory in the UK and also producing Lancaster bombers. Immediately after hostilities ended it was taken over by car body specialists Fisher & Ludlow, and is still in operation today, now manufacturing vehicles for Jaguar Land Rover.

• ...Aeronautical Research Committee Reports and Memoranda No. 1480 (T.3280). June 1932. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1932.

  Sextodecimo. Original grey cloth, titles to spine and upper board in black. 22 plates of which all but one are double-sided. Ink stamp of the Castle Bromwich Aircraft Factory. Cloth a little rubbed, corners bumped, spotting to endpapers, light musty smell. Very good condition.

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Pagé, Victor W. (ed.) | Henley's ABC of Gliding and Sailflying

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• Details & Condition

• First UK edition, originally published in the US in the previous year. An attractive copy and uncommon in the jacket.

  The earliest successful glider was created by the British aeronautical designer Sir George Cayley and flown in 1853, initiating a wave of research into both unpowered and powered flight, and gliders had become relatively sophisticated by the time the Wright Brothers flew the first powered aircraft in 1903. It wasn’t until the 1920s, however, that gliding became an organised sport, making this an early popular guide for the beginner. Heavily illustrated, it contains information on the mechanics of flight; the different types of gliders, including powered gliders and water gliders; glider design and construction; and detailed chapters on key components such as brakes, control cables, fuselage, and wing frames.

• London: Chapman & Hall, Ltd., 1931.

  Duodecimo. Original blue cloth, title to spine gilt, publisher’s logo to upper bard in blind. With the dust jacket. Photographic frontispiece, illustrations throughout the text. Ownership inscription dated 1943 to the front free endpaper. Cloth very lightly rubbed at the extremities but otherwise bright and fresh, faint partial toning to the endpapers, faint spotting to the endpapers and edges of text block. An excellent copy in the rubbed and tanned jacket with some spots and marks and an over-price ticket to the spine panel.

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War Manpower Commission | Women in the War—We Can't Win Without Them

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• Due to this item's size and shape, extra shipping charges will apply. Please contact us for an estimate.
  
  An original Second World War poster promoting women in the wartime workforce, produced in 1942 by the War Manpower Commission. At the time, “Women in the War” was one of the most widely distributed images of a woman labouring in war production, unlike the “We Can Do It” poster, which was produced only for Westinghouse plants during a few weeks in 1943 and did not become iconic until the 1980s.

  “Among the many agencies President Roosevelt had created during the war was the War Manpower Commission, formed in April 1942 to oversee war labor issues in the military, industrial, and civilian sectors. And in June 1942, the Office of War Information was formed to manage the flows of news and propaganda about the war to the public. By 1943, when the labor shortage was most acute, the two agencies worked together in concerted campaigns, targeting employers to hire women and women to become ‘production soldiers’” (Yellin, Our Mothers’ War, p. 44). Women labouring in factories, even in the service of the war effort, was controversial, with only 30 percent of husbands giving unqualified support to the idea of their wives performing such jobs. “Despite the tide of public opinion against working wives, War Manpower Commission director Paul McNutt had a strategy for quelling opposition: ‘The money appeal will continue strong,’ he said in 1943, but we’ll concentrate on patriotism’. Sure enough, all across the country, the public was bombarded with spirited print and radio ads, magazine articles, and posters with slogans like ‘Do the Job He Left Behind’ or ‘Women in the War—We Can’t Win Without Them’ depicting noble, pretty but serious, female war workers on the job... The campaigns glamorized war work, always showing that women could maintain their femininity and still be useful” (Yellin, pp. 45-46).

  Examples of this important poster are held at numerous institutions, including the Library of Congress, Imperial War Museum, MOMA, and the Pritzker Military Museum. Copies in such beautiful, unused condition are uncommon in commerce.

• Washington D.C.: US Govt. Printing Office, 1942.

  Colour poster (28 x 40 in). Professionally mounted, framed and glazed using archival materials. Original creases from folding, else bright and fresh. Excellent condition. Professionally mounted, glazed and framed using archival materials.

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War Office | Women's War Work

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• SOLD First and only edition of this uncommon and evocatively-illustrated publication on women’s contributions on the British home front during the First World War. This copy from the War Office Library, with its ink stamp on the title and upper cover.

  Very quickly after the outbreak of the war it became clear that the mobilisation of the male workforce would create shortages of munitions, equipment, and food, and that large numbers of women would need to move into jobs from which they were previously restricted. Despite the hesitance of some officials, factory managers, and trade unions, “reports were conducted early on as to the suitability of women to meet the demands of such work. As early as 1915 the Ministry of Munitions Supply Committee made recommendations on the employment and remuneration of women on munitions work. This helped contribute to agreed suitable conditions by which a woman could be employed, and the War Office published several guides as to the employment of women” (”The Munitionettes and the Work of Women in the First World War”, National Records of Scotland).

  Women’s War Work was one of these publications, appearing in 1916 and providing a very detailed list of roles in which women had been “successfully in the temporary replacement of men”, not only in munitions, but also the production of everyday goods such as chemicals and fertiliser, soap, candles, clothing and textiles, food and drink, and paper goods, including printing and book binding. The lists are accompanied by contact details of officials who can assist in the recruitment of women, and by an exceptional 72 large photographs of women at work. One woman is pictured modelling artificial teeth in wax for dentistry; brewery employees roll barrels and clean out vats; wagon washers pose with buckets and brushes in the middle of their messy shift; a smiling woman “stokes the furnaces of a large factory in South London”; an agricultural worker with the Women’s Volunteer Reserve sharpens the blade of a sickle, pianos are tuned, and women are photographed serving as butchers, bakers, window washers, porters, drivers, and posties. Numerous roles within heavy industry are photographed, from the manufacture of ammunition to the production of glass, radiators, tanned leather, and motorcycles. This is a fantastic record of women as home front workers, with most of the images so far having seen little to no reproduction in popular culture.

• ...In Maintaining the Industries & Export Trade of the United Kingdom. Information Officially Compiled for the Use of Recruiting Officers, Military Representatives and Tribunals. Issued by the War Office, September 1916. London: Printed under the Authority of His Majesty’s Stationery Office by the Chiswick Press, 1916.

  Tall quarto. Original grey wrappers printed in black. 20 leaves of glossy paper with integral page numbering, 3 pages of which are text-only and one blank, the rest comprising 72 black and white photographs. War office Library ink stamps to the upper wrapper and title, small blue ink mark to the upper wrapper partially bracketing “War office” in the imprint, spot from sticker removal affecting the tail of the spine and edges of the wrappers. Loss from the spine, which has been strengthened with adhesive at some point in the past. A little light creasing and rubbing at the other edges of the wrappers. Contents clean. A very good copy.

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Webb, James E. | Three uncommon imprints by NASA administrator James E. Webb

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• James E. Webb (1906-1996) was NASA’s second administrator and one of its most significant, seeing the agency through the Mercury and Gemini programs and the preparation for the Apollo missions.

  To Webb, “the space program was more than a political race. He believed that NASA had to strike a balance between human space flight and science because such a combination would serve as a catalyst for strengthening the nation's universities and aerospace industry... Webb's vision of a balanced program resulted in a decade of space science research that remains unparalleled today. During his tenure, NASA invested in the development of robotic spacecraft, which explored the lunar environment so that astronauts could do so later, and it sent scientific probes to Mars and Venus, giving Americans their first-ever view of the strange landscape of outer space. As early as 1965, Webb also had written that a major space telescope, then known as the Large Space Telescope, should become a major NASA effort. By the time Webb retired just a few months before the first moon landing in July 1969, NASA had launched more than 75 space science missions to study the stars and galaxies, our own Sun and the as-yet unknown environment of space above the Earth's atmosphere. Missions such as the Orbiting Solar Observatory and the Explorer series of astronomical satellites built the foundation for the most successful period of astronomical discovery in history, which continues today”. Webb also “enhanced the role of scientists in key ways. He gave them greater control in the selection process of science missions and he created the NASA University Program, which established grants for space research, funded the construction of new laboratories at universities and provided fellowships for graduate students” (”Who is James Webb?”, NASA James Webb Space Telescope website).

  Webb’s legacy has been complicated by allegations that at the State Department and NASA he played a leading role in the lavender scare, in which hundreds of gay personnel were fired from the federal government. In 2021 four astronomers published an op-ed in Scientific American requesting the renaming of the soon-to-be-launched James Webb Space Telescope, but NASA administrators announced that an inquiry into Webb’s actions determined it was unlikely he had played a key role in the firings and the name would be kept.

  These pamphlets deal with various aspects of space science and the space race. “Man Must Take Environment into Space” discusses the hostile environment of space and the ways that NASA scientists have prepared their vehicles and crew for it. “Administration and Management of Space Exploration” lays out the structure and goals of NASA, and “From Runnymede to Ganymede” is the text of a historical talk that Webb gave at the Celebration of the Prelude to Independence in Williamsburg, Virginia on May 27th, 1967.

• ...“Man Must Take Environment into Space, Project Gemini.”, “Administration and Management of Space Exploration, Project Apollo”, and “From Runnymede to Ganymede” in Speaking of Space and Aeronautics Vol. IV, No. 1. Washington D.C.: NASA, 1962 & 1967.

  3 16-page, wire-stitched pamphlets. The first two in white self-wraps printed in blue. The third in yellow wrappers printed in black and grey. Illustrations from photos within the texts of the first and second pamphlets. Just a little creasing and rubbing. Excellent condition.

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[Embrace the Base] Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp Invite Women to Take Part in an International Action

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• A rare poster advertising Embrace the Base, one of the key mass actions at the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp. We have been able to locate only two copies in institutional collections, at the LSE Women’s Library and the Glasgow Women’s Library.

  The Greenham Common protest was established in September of 1981 by the Welsh group Women for Life on Earth, who were opposed to the deployment of nuclear tipped cruise missiles at the site. What was initially planned as a single march became a permanent protest camp, one of the most significant and longest lasting women’s protests of the 20th century. In February 1982, for political reasons, the camp was made women only, and the following month they engaged in their first blockade of the base. Embrace the Base was their next major action. Taking place on December 12th & 13th, 1982, it saw 30,000 women from across from across the UK—drawn by chain letter, word of mouth, and posters such as this one—join hands to surround the nine mile perimeter fence. This copy of the poster seems to have been used in Birmingham, and includes instructions for obtaining coach tickets at the “Peace Centre (opp New Street Station)”, as well as local activist contact details, in marker pen.

  As well as being an early and rare example of Greenham Common ephemera, this poster is particularly interesting in that is features a spider web, “a frequently reoccurring symbol in Greenham women’s cultural imaginary” because of its mythological and symbolic associations. “The metaphor of ‘building a web’ and being connected to each other in a ‘web-like structure’ populated Greenham women’s speech and writing. Alison Young describes Greenham women’s reclamation of the spider as revolving primarily around the notion of the spider’s web. She writes that the web ‘shows connections between women or between ideas; it can be begun at any point or at any time; each single strand is weak and fragile, yet when interwoven it is strong, beautiful and efficient’ (1990, 38). In line with Young’s reading, Roseneil writes that, ‘the web was a symbol of women's collective power, seemingly fragile, but actually very strong’” (1999, 179, ft39)” (Feigenbaum, Tactics and Technology: Cultural Resistance at the Greenham Women’s Peace Camp, PhD thesis, McGill University, April 2008).

  The Greenham Common camp had no hierarchy, and its nature was defined by the thousands of individual women who visited when they could or lived permanently onsite for years. The activists engaged in non-violent resistance by disrupting movement in and out of the gates, cutting down portions of the fence, and trespassing on military property, and they endured frequent police raids, arrests, and evictions. A large number of the protesters were middle aged and older; they considered themselves ordinary mothers and working women, and made a point of the fact were opposed to nuclear weapons for deeply personal reasons. Their gender was crucial to their message: “a woman’s place was not in the home, but at a protest. Women could use their identity as carers and mothers to say, this is about the future safety of our children. We weaponised traditional notions of femininity” (Suzanne Moore, “How the Greenham Common Protest Changed Lives, The Guardian, March 20th, 2017).

  “Greenham was powerful. It taught my generation about collective action, about protest as spectacle, a way of life, incredibly hard but sometimes joyous. Still the image of resistance for me is not the famous photograph of a striking miner confronting a policeman at Orgreave, it is the picture of Greenham women dancing in 1982: witchy, unarmed women dancing on a missile silo. This magical, powerful image shows how the peace camp both played on traditional images of the feminine and then subverted them. Greenham created an alternative world of unstoppable women. It changed lives.” (Moore, 2017).

• ...to Stop the Siting of Cruise Missiles Anywhere in Europe. December 12th & 13th. Embrace the Base on Sunday. Close the Base on Monday.

  [England, [1982].

  Mechanically printed poster (420mm x 580mm). Professionally mounted, framed and glazed using archival materials. White text and illustration of a missile caught in a spider’s web superimposed over a grey and red photograph of the mushroom cloud over Nagasaki. Marker pen notes at the bottom of the poster give contact details and instructions for travelling to the camp by bus from Birmingham. Vertical and horizontal creases from folding, a little light rubbing. Very good condition.

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[Partridge, Margaret] Haslett, Caroline | The Electrical Handbook for Women

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• Details & Condition

• First edition, first impression, in the uncommon dust jacket.

  The Electrical Handbook for Women was “the cornerstone publication” of the Electrical Association for Women, which was founded in 1924 by engineer Caroline Haslett and other members of the Women’s Engineering Society, “in part to encourage the use of electricity in the home” (ODNB). The contents are well-illustrated and include sections on the general principles underlying electrical technology, legal and regulatory issues, and the technical details of domestic electricity applications such as lighting, heating, cooking, and laundry.

  Though edited by Haslett, the book’s main author was electrical engineer Margaret Partridge (1891-1967), who began her career as a munitions worker during the First World War and then founded her own firm, M. Partridge & Co., Domestic Engineers. “The new company focused on providing lighting and electric power for farm and country houses... In 1922 she put on an exhibition of electric models and machines in Exeter, including a range of labour-saving devices aimed at women in the home. It was predicted that her exhibition would ‘stir up the women of Exeter to demand the installation of electricity’ (The Woman Engineer, vol. 1 no. 17 [1923])... Her first rural electrification scheme was in Bampton, a contract gained in 1925 with the support of the electrical engineer Dr John Purves. She canvassed for shareholders among WES members, including Lady Parsons and Lady Shelley-Rolls, and the scheme was completed in 1926. She wrote to her friend Caroline Haslett from the power station, ‘My dear – for sheer exciting experience give me a town to light’ (Partridge to Caroline Haslett, n.d., Inst. ET UK0108 NAEST 092/4.9.68).” (ODNB).

• ...Edited for The Electrical Association for Women. Foreword by Sir John Snell. London: Hodder & Stoughton, Limited, 1934.

  Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine and EWA roundel to upper board in silver. With the dust jacket. Photographic frontispiece and 19 plates of which 15 are double-sided, folding map, numerous diagrams and illustrations within the text. Spine slightly rolled, a few small spots to the edges of the text block, and very occasionally to the contents. A very good copy in the rubbed jacket with a closed tear affecting the title and a 1-inch chip in the upper panel, as well as a similarly-sized chip at the bottom of the lower panel not affecting the jacket blurb, and a few other smaller chips at the corners and edges.

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