[Victorian scientific patent.] Printed 'Letters Patent to Thomas Earl of Dundonald, of Belgrave Road, in the County of Middlesex, Admiral in Her Majesty's Navy, for the Invention of "Improvements in Coating and Insulating Wire."'

6pp., 8vo, followed by one lithographic plate by Waterlow & Sons. Stitched. In blue printed wraps. Aged and creased, with minor staining; in worn wraps,and with some underlining in ink on second page. Dundonald's 'Provisional Specification' begins: 'My improvements consist in variou particulars whereby ordinary concrete bituminous substances are rendered applicable to guide and transmit the galvanic or electric fluid through subterranean excavations, as effectually as the well-proved bitumen of Trinidad or that of the British North American provinces.' Cochrane's entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography states that, following his free pardon of 1832, he 'turned his attention to the scientific and technical interests inherited from his father and reinforced by his experience of war at sea. The development of steam propulsion was his major interest, and he pursued several key technologies, often years in advance of the necessary metallurgical and engineering progress needed to make them practical. His work culminated in the steam warship HMS Janus of 1848, which combined his hull form, rotary engines, and boilers in a promising, if unsuccessful, package.' No other copy traced on COPAC or WorldCat, or on the market currently.