Item #15186 A Treatise on the Forces which Produce the Organization of Plants. With an Appendix Containing Several Memoirs on Capillary Attraction, Electricity and the Chemical Action of Light. John William Draper.

Draper, John William

A Treatise on the Forces which Produce the Organization of Plants. With an Appendix Containing Several Memoirs on Capillary Attraction, Electricity and the Chemical Action of Light

New York: Harper & Brothers, 1844.

First Edition. 4to, pp. xi, 108, 216, with coloured frontispiece, and three plates (one double-page) containing 136 figures. Original brown ribbed cloth, chipped at spine ends, rubbed at corners and fore edge. Contents clean and sound. Draper (1811-1882) was a physician and chemist who conducted pioneering experiments on the chemical effects of light. He became particularly interested in photography and is credited with having taken the first portrait of an individual, as well as the first photographs of the Moon and of an object under a microscope (ANB). The appendix to this work includes two chapters on the daguerreotype process.