From the Library of THEODORE VON KÁRMÁN. EIFFEL, GUSTAVE (1832-1923) Installation d'un laboratoire d'aérodynamique [with:] Les nouvelles recherches expérimentales sur la résistance de l'air et l'aviation faites au laboratoire du Champ de Mars et d'Auteuil. Paris: Imprimerie L. Maretheux [and] Société des Ingénieurs Civils de France, 1910-1912. Large 8vo (273 x 190 mm) and (269 x 189 mm). The first with 6 folding plates; the second with text diagrams. Original printed wrappers. Housed together in a modern custom blue cloth clamshell box, spine lettered in gilt. Provenance: Theodore von Kármán (1881-1963), pioneering Hungarian American aerospace engineer and director of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at Caltech (acquired privately by the present owner). FIRST EDITIONS, offprint issues, from the personal working library of aerospace pioneer Theodore von Kármán, the first work bearing Eiffel's official presentation distribution stamp. Presentation stamp clear and well-impressed. A REMARKABLE ASSOCIATION LINKING TWO GENERATIONS OF PIONEERING AERODYNAMIC RESEARCH. Following the completion of his historic iron tower, Gustave Eiffel turned his immense engineering acumen to the young science of aviation. Recognizing that drop-testing objects from the tower's platforms introduced too many external atmospheric variables, Eiffel inverted the experimental framework: he kept the test models static and moved the air artificially around them. The first work, Installation d'un laboratoire d'aérodynamique (1910), provides the definitive technical and architectural accounting of the open-circuit wind tunnel he erected at the base of the Champ de Mars. Crucially, the front wrapper bears the crisp ink stamp 'Hommage de G. Eiffel' in the upper right quadrant. Because Eiffel privately financed his laboratory and chose not to patent his aerodynamic designs, his office utilized this specific stamp on complimentary offprints dispatched directly to international academies and elite mechanics to encourage widespread scientific development. The second work, Les nouvelles recherches expérimentales... (1912), documents the next critical evolution of his experiments. Following municipal zoning changes and space constraints at the Champ de Mars, Eiffel relocated his infrastructure to rue Boileau in Auteuil, establishing the historic aerodynamic facility that validated early aircraft profiles for Louis Blériot, the Wright Brothers, and Nieuport. The front wrapper bears an ink inscription 'E' in the upper left corner, typical of the alphabetized filing system used within the private research library of its subsequent owner, Theodore von Kármán. As the mentor to the next generation of supersonic and jet propulsion engineers, Von Kármán's possession of these foundational monographs represents a direct intellectual lineage from the birthplace of modern aerodynamics. In 1911, he mathematically described the 'von Kármán vortex street'. This is the repeating, alternating pattern of swirling vortices created when a fluid (like air or water) flows past a blunt object. While the phenomenon was unknown when the Eiffel Tower was built, Eiffel's porous lattice design inadvertently mitigated these dangerous Kármán vortices, which otherwise cause violent, oscillating vibrations. Cf. Brockett, Bibliography of Aeronautics, 3986; National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) Catalog of Early Aerodynamics, 1142. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing