EUCLID.

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Elementa geometriae. First edition of "the oldest textbook in the history of science" (Norman), "a monument of typography" (Kelly), and "an outstandingly fine piece of printing" (PMM).Ratdolt's Euclid remains one of his most technically advanced and accomplished productions. His dedication to Giovanni Mocenigo, the doge of Venice, raises the question why, amid a flood of works by both ancient and modern authors, so few works in the field of mathematics had been published in that great city. Ratdolt reasoned that the means had not yet been devised to print the geometrical figures necessary to illustrate such works. "Since this alone stood in the way of their full benefit to all, I resolved - by my own invention and not without much labour - to contrive a method whereby geometrical figures might be printed with the same ease as letters." Ratdolt does not explain exactly how he solved this technical difficulty. His diagrams were traditionally identified as woodcuts (BMC, GW), but it seems much more probable that they were cast in typemetal.Euclid's Elements was originally composed in Greek at the court of Ptolemy in Alexandria. Campanus's recension, whose earliest witness is a manuscript dated 1259, became the standard version of the high and late Middle Ages. It was based on but enlarged from the translation from the Arabic made by Adelard of Bath about 120 years earlier, the so-called Adelard version II. Campanus's recension continued to be printed at least as late as 1558. Bo

• Printing: later

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