1895 — Two parts in one. Octavo. Pp. viii, 399; iv, 25 collotype plates with a total of 176 photographs, interleaved with leaves of explanatory text. With 75 text illustrations in various techniques. Hardcover, bound in contemporary cloth and marbled boards, cloth French corners, remnants of old shelf tickets; old military institutional stamps to half-title and title; neat cloth reinforcement have been applied to joints as well as to split gutter margins in the atlas section due to weight of plates and different binding method. In good general condition, fine text, fine plates. ~ Third edition, completely revised and considerably enlarged. The book, a standard work, went through several editions. The present third edition, however, the last to be published by the Paris publishing house of Firmin-Didot, remained unchanged for many years. Only in 1913 appeared the fourth edition which was replaced shortly thereafter (1922) by a new edition. Both these later editions, published by a new publisher (Flammarion), contain a considerably smaller amount of text figures. The wonderful cinematographic photographs in the Atlas of the present edition, made by Albert Londe, Head of the Photographic Department at Salpêtrière, are printed here in collotype, one of the most accurate and attractive methods of photomechanical tonal printing processes. Highly skilled and expensive process, it cannot produce more than a limited number of impressions. It has been used for single-sheet prints and luxury portfolios, and since the 1950s has been abandoned by all except a few small specialist firms.
