Among my favorite little books in the collection is A Practical Treatise on Locomotive Engines upon Railways by the French engineer François Marie Guyonneau de Pambour and published in Philadelphia in 1836 by E.L. Carey & A. Hart. I enjoy this book for several reasons, not only for the lovely technical illustrations and early 19th-century language shown here, but also for its beautiful and quite early American cloth trade covers. Its purple cloth (now faded to a lovely, light purple-brown) sports an exquisite, embossed floral pattern so characteristic of 1830s American trade covers.
de Pambour, who produced 44 works on the steam engine, published the first extensive treatise on steam locomotives in 1835, Traité théorique et pratique des machines locomotives. The English translation shown here is one of two American printings of the treatise produced the following year. The other was published in New York by D.K. Minor and G.C. Schaeffer, publishers of The Rail-Road Journal. There was also a London printing of this translation produced by the science publisher John Weale, also in 1836. The work was popular enough for a second edition to be issued by both Weale and Carey & Hart in 1840.
I introduced this book once to an English class working on erasure poetry because I thought it would pose a particular challenge. No one took the bait, but I did by using the introduction. Rather than being a challenge, to my great surprise a poem practically leaped off the page:
Preface to a Practical Treatise on Locomotives, 1836
There exists no special work
Slightly touched upon the matter;
A time when the art was scarcely beyond its birth.
They describe the facts that pass before our eyes,
A wish to acquire knowledge of these engines.
Many questions, in a faulty manner.
No facts will be quoted.
No theory exposed.
The surprise ceased
In considering the natural machine in universal use.
I hope to use this, along with details from the illustrations, to make UWM Special Collections Zine #4 in time for Milwaukee Zine Fest on April 4!
-- MAX, Head, Special Collections
