Franklin: The Quest for Paper Copies

[beamjockey]

You may recall my entry about Ben Franklin's book Experiments and Observations on Electricity. Just checked the reliable abebooks. The book is remarkably scarce. My choices are:

1. The Octavo Press CD-ROM facsimile, about $25;

2. The Octavo Press fancy super-scholarly ultra-facsimile, on three CD-ROMs, for $225;

3. Original copies, starting around $8000.

You'd think someone would have put an inexpensive edition into print, sometime in the past two and a half centuries. Else maybe the book is not as important as I thought.

Guess I'll hit a library. If I like the book enough, maybe I'll buy the CD-ROM...

Comments

[janetmk.livejournal.com]

Here's a pdf (http://dbhs.wvusd.k12.ca.us/webdocs/Chem-History/Franklin-1749/Franklin-1749-00.pdf) from a web site (http://dbhs.wvusd.k12.ca.us/webdocs/Chem-History/Classic-Papers-Menu.html) that has classic papers in the history of chemistry.

[shimgray.livejournal.com]

That's just the title page, though... here's the set.