Unintentionally acquiring autographed books

[jambouk]

Buying second hand copies of old astronomy books online is great fun, and what surprises me is how often they have been autographed by the author seemingly unknown to the retailer. Patrick Moore seems to have signed thousands, but I also have got books by other authors who have left their mark; Clyde Tombaugh, David Levy etc. One arrived in the post yesterday which I'd picked up for £2.81 and was signed by Fred Hoyle - it's just lovely to think he once held this copy of my book.

James

 

[Knighty2112]

Nice. I have two books signed by Patrick too, plus one by David too after winning it many years in a competition from an Astronomy magazine way back in the late '80s! Not got any 2nd hand books so far with any autographs in though, so well done!  

[Putaendo Patrick]

Very nice!

Fred Hoyle also wrote this book in 1973, which was Copernicus's 500th birthday.

Read it with care, though - Hoyle apparently relied heavily on 19th century sources and missed a quantity of significant 20th century  advances in Copernican investigation. See Edward Rosen's review published in the Journal for the History of Astronomy http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/seri/JHA../0004//0000202.000.html