Arpentage

2805 — <p>Manuscript 4to. 23.5 x 17.5 cm 2 ff. pencil sketch of arms Marlborough and blank 196 ff. and with 27 drawn folding plates many of which are colored. Bound in contemporary French calf spine gilt in six decorative compartments with title on letterpiece. Excellent with all plates drawn and many some colored in a very professional hand.<br /><br /></p><p>Very attractive early 18th-century French illustrated manuscript of practical geometry in seven books including individual sections on longimetry planimetry and stereometry—the fundamentals of precision surveying and draftsmanship. The manuscript closely follows but is not identical to Jacques Ozanam's <i>Géométrie Pratique du sr Boulenger</i> Paris 1684 which itself was a revision of <i>La Géométrie pratique </i>Paris 1640 by the mathematician Jean Boulenger. Though the work was reprinted well into the 18th C the present volume seems to follow Ozanam's 1693 edition most closely. Ozanam's book however lacks the drawn and colored figures of the present volume many of which are quite elaborate. The facade of Notre Dame is shown in an exercise for calculating the height of a wall and a segment on proportion features detailed miniature maps of the Brittany coastline identifying towns such as St. Malo and Mont St. Michel. <br /></p><p>The manuscript exemplifies the early 18th C approach to applied trigonometry—a field that by the mid-17th C was starting to resemble an exact science. Book II defines the common functions sine cosine secant etc.; Book V treats longimetric puzzles such as determining the height of a mountain or a spire or measuring the length of bodies of water; the final two books treat planimetry and stereometry including applied trigonometry—calculating the volumes of real bodies i.e. barrels pipes etc. Those sections of the manuscript that do not appear in <i>Géométrie Pratique</i>—mainly a tract on logarithms and a discussion of surveying instruments—also fall within Ozanam's oeuvre as he published a monograph on compasses in 1673 and a book of logarithmic tables and trigonometric functions in 1685.</p><p>Jacques Ozanam 1640-1717 was best known for his <i>Récréations mathematiques</i> Paris 1694 which "may be regarded as the forerunner of modern books on mathematical recreations." In addition to Boulenger's work he also revised that of Adriaan Vlacq 1600-1667 and the Jesuit mathematician Claude-François Milliet Dechalles.</p> DSB.10 pp.263-265. [France, early 18th century].