CIVIL AND HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING 18th century. LESAGE (Pierre - Lot 204

CIVIL AND HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING 18th century. LESAGE (Pierre-Charles). Notice pour servir à l'éloge de M. Perronet, Premier ingénieur des ponts et chaussées de France.Paris, Chez Bernard libraire de l'Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées, An XIII-1805. In-4, [4]-128 pp. with portrait-frontispiece and 2 plates. Contemporary pink marbled boards, smooth spine. A fine copy with wide margins. First edition of this important biographical note on Jean-Rodolphe Perronet (1708-1794), with details of the works carried out by this great 18th-century engineer (bridges, canals, machines), who was also the first director of the Ponts et Chaussées. Complete with a handsome bust portrait-frontispiece of Perronet, mezzotinted in black by Quenedey, the Parisian portraitist of the Physionotrace, after Cochin fils. With a large fold-out plan for a canal to bring water from the Yvette and Bièvre rivers to the Estrapade in Paris - Peronnet was the first to propose, before the Revolution, diverting Yvette and Bièvre to supply the capital with drinking water - and a bistre etching with two medallions showing a perspective view of the Concorde Bridge (then Pont Louis XVI, built by Perronet) and a plan of the Place de la Concorde. Following: CRETET, Emmanuel. de "Instruction sur les ponts à Bascule". With 3 very fine folding section plans engraved on copper by Moisy, gouached in colored ink, of the machines "plan du tablier" and "coupes L et l". The title and plates bear Brice's signature. Paris, Imprimerie impériale, An XIII. 18 pp. 3 plates on blue laid paper in folio format. Provenances: Three ex donos, the first autograph signed by the author on verso of the title page: "donné par l'auteur à Monsieur Brice, ingénieur du ... des Ponts et Chaussées Paris ce 10 ... an 13 (1805) Lesage". Pen and ink. Lesage, an engineer, traveled and worked with Perronet at the Ponts et Chaussées. Ex dono by Brice to Félix Madelein. And by the latter to Joseph Madelein in 1919. Interspersed with a large black silver print, photo (ca. 50s) of Eze-Village (Provence). Minor wear to boards.