GRIGNON, Pierre-Clement. Me´moires de physique sur l'art de fabriquer le fer d'en fondre & forger des canons d'artillerie.
Parigi, Delalain, 1775
In 4to; 257 x 192 mm.; contemporary leather binding with gilt title and rules on label on spine, red edges. Pp. [4], XXXVII, [3], 654, [2]. Woodcut vignette on titlepage, 13 folded engraved plates, 1 table on p. 490. Some detached plates, grazes on binding. Internally nice specimen.
First edition of this collection of 21 essays on physics and natural history, including two important texts on the history of modern crystallography dealing with iron and its crystalline forms and variations. In addition to these memoirs, the volume also contains a number of natural curiosities and strange zoomorphic jokes.
Smith, History of Metallography, pp. 132-136: "In 1775 Pierre Grignon published the present book on various aspects of iron mineralogy and metallurgy which is of considerable importance to the history of metallurgy and crystallography ... Although the possibility of solid solutions as a mixed aggregate is implicit in the ideas of many of the corpuscular philosophers, it is Grignon who first describes a crystallographic model of a mixed crystal".
Pierre-Clément Grignon (1723-1784) was a renowned French metallurgist, antiquarian and archaeologist, a disciple of the Comte de Caylus and closely associated with Buffon. A director of the forges at Bayard, his improvements in ironmaking earned him the title of correspondent of the Académie des Sciences. (Berthelot, T. 19, p. 418)