Cours de Sciences Appliquees aux Machines et aux Arts Militaires. Leçon unique sur les automobiles

FULL DESCRIPTION: Bourdelles auto

[Bourdelles, Captain]. Cours de Sciences Appliquees aux Machines et aux Arts Militaires. Leçon unique sur les automobiles.
[Fontainebleau], Lithographie de l'École d'application de l'artillerie et du génie, 1905.
(23.5 x 18.5 cm). [4], 1-37 [38, blank] pp., illustrated with figures, and the text produced via autographié, a lithographic process. In the publisher’s original red wrappers, some rubbing and a few tiny splits to a few page edges, but well preserved. No copies located in OCLC or CCFr.

An extremely rare technical manual for the instruction and use of military students at a well-established French military Polytechnic school, the École d'Application de l'Artillerie et du Genie. The manual instructs on the workings of the automobile and the internal combustion engine at an early stage of its development.

Written by a French artillery Captain, this detailed teaching manual aimed at engineers and technicians covers in a systematic and cohesive manner the following (from the table of contents): the engine, distributor, exhaust, intake valves, regulator / timing, cooling, spark, carburetors, transmission—differential, gears, clutch—, chassis, steering, brakes, and lubrication. The language of the manual is precise and lucid, and would have served both for instruction to engineering students but also to auto-didactic learning as well. In the early days of the automobile the lack of convenient service stations meant that motorists would have been obliged to rely on themselves to troubleshoot any difficulties that came up when out on the road. Access to such a manual would have appealed to both drivers and students of mechanical engineering.