The boy's playbook of science: including the various manipulations and arrangements of chemical and philosophical apparatus required for the successful performance of scientific experiments

Aimed at an audience of boys, it describes the properties of matter; centrifugal force; astronomy; gravity; cohesion and adhesion; capillary attraction; crystallisation; chemistry; frictional electricity; voltaic electricity; magnetism and electro-magnetism; the electric telegraph (with the telephone, phonograph and microphone); magneto-electricity; dia-magnetism; light, optics, and optical instruments; the refraction of light; refracting optical instruments (including the magic lantern and experiments for it, choreutoscope, the opaque lantern, spectroscope, phenakistoscope, thaumatrope, kalotrope, photodrome, stereoscope); the absorption of light; the inflection, diffraction or polarization of light; heat; the steam-engine. 'Illustrated with four hundred and seventy engravings,' mainly of diagrams and drawings of equipment for experiments. One large illustration shows the optical box at the Polytechnic, and another shows the Siege of Delhi portrayed there.

Part of the Bill Douglas and Peter Jewell Collection