EUCLID

£39,500 · Offered by Sokol Books

This outstanding copy was printed on blue paper for presentation. No copies on blue paper of this edition are recorded in major bibliographies or at US libraries. Intended as a substitute for parchment, blue paper was first employed by Aldus, and perfected by Giolito, for deluxe copies prepared for important personalities. It became an increasingly widespread practice with selected copies of particularly scientific and architectural works in the course of the C16. The translator and commentator of this edition, Federico Commandino, had also overseen the printing on blue paper of a limited Latin edition of Euclid s Elements in 1572. Very rare copy, on blue paper, of the first Italian translation of Euclid s Elements edited by Federico Commandino. Commandino (1509-75) was a humanist from Urbino renowned for his translations of the works of ancient Greek mathematicians including Aristarchus of Samos and Pappus of Alexandria. Several of his Latin (and later vernacular) renditions of Greek mathematical terms, for which he relied on previous adaptations by Roman authors like Cicero and Vitruvius, became the standard. Euclid (4th century BC) was the first to reunite mathematical theories from the ancient world into a coherent, bi-dimensional system centred on simple axioms of plane geometry, based on angles and distance, from which further propositions (or theorems) could be deduced. His Elements began with the crucial definition of point , that which has no part nor size and which

• Binding: Hardcover

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