Architecture

Division generalle des mathematiques les principes de la geometrie avec les deffinitions necessaires pour l’intelligence des Mathematiques.tire es d’Euclide.

D7408 — N.p. but Paris mid to late 19th-century. Hardcover. Very Good. Large folio 420 x 270mm. Text in French. First part for geometry with four printed pages and marginal illustrations of figures of lines angles and triangles trapezoids circles and rhombus. Second part for proportions and measures with two printed pages and one leaf for figure for pentagon. Third part of four printed pages for the definition of terms concerning defense. Followed by 28 purely manuscript leaves illustrated or annotated with figures and captions of geometric shapes applied to architectural plans and military fortifications including the pentagon octagon hexagon. Bound in characteristic 19th-century marbled paper over pasteboards backed in calf strip; some light foxing and edgewear at lower right margins otherwise good maintaining the wide sheets of a heavily used student book. Formerly in the collection of Sir Peter Arthur Halkett Baronet D.L. 1834-1904 of Pitfirrane with his motto “Fides sufficit” Faith is sufficient. Sir Arthur Halkett like many of his ancestors chose the Army as a profession. He had a prolific military career with many narrow escapes as a Crimean War veteran and took various commissions in India and Russia. When peace came in 1856 Sir Arthur Halkett returned to Pitfirrane to marry a Colonel’s daughter although the next two decades would prove unpredictable. He accepted numerous positions and rankings within the British Army before finally retiring as a Colonel in 1888. The association with this Colonel sometime in the late 19th century is nearly contemporary to the printing of the French sheets; there are perhaps a few decades between them. As the manuscript notes are in French it is unlikely that Sir Arthur Halkett is the original owner but may have somehow acquired this lesson book during one of his tours. <br/><br/>Bound manuscript and printed sheets for study of military fortifications from the collection of a prominent British Colonel Sir Arthur Halkett. By the end of the sixteenth century courses on Euclid’s elements geometry and fortifications were a main part of lesson plans. In fact Galileo had been a main proponent of this type of erudition. These large student course books cover the essential topics of practical arithmetic and geometry military architecture the building and maintaining of fortresses as well as the elements of theoretical geometry. It is evident from the good technique exemplified in the figures that perspective was typical of these lessons. hardcover books