Bidspirit auction | MORDECAI, ALFRED. Report on Experiments

MORDECAI, ALFRED. Report on Experiments on Gunpowder made at Washington Arsenal, in 1843 and 1844. FIRST EDITION. Six engraved plates at end, one folding chart. pp. viii, 328. Foxed. Original boards, rubbed, spine chipped. 8vo. Washington, Gideon, 1845. Alfred Mordecai (1804-87) was the son of Jacob Mordecai, a pioneer in women’s education in America, and a Jewish Bible scholar. Raised in a Jewish Orthodox home in Warrenton, North Carolina, where he was educated as the only boy at his father’s boarding school, Alfred enrolled in the United Sates Military Academy at West Point when he was 15 years old. He subsequently graduated first in his 1823 West Point class. His military career was very successful, first being appointed assistant to the Army Chief of Engineers, and then assistant to the Secretary of War and to the Chief of Ordnance in Washington, DC. Mordecai became the Army's leading authority in developing all new weapons, ammunition and ordnance equipment for the Army. This 1845 Report of Experiments on Gunpowder contains ”an immense amount of research experimental material on gunpowder as it behaves in, or with, light and heavy artillery” ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0734743X99001785? via%3Dihub ). MORDECAI WAS ONE THE FIRST JEWISH AMERICANS TO CHOOSE THE ARMY AS A CAREER.