La Maniere Universelle de Mr. Desargues lyonnais pour poser l'essieu et placer les heurs et autres choses aux Cadrans au Soleil

Paris de l'imprimerie de Pierre Des-Hayes, ruë de la Harpe, à la Roze Rouge 1643. 8vo, 171 x 106 mms., pp. [viii], 68, engraved title-page preceding printed title-page, which is followed by engraved dedication page, 28 engraved leaves of geometrical designs, engraved on recto and verso except for the last leaf, recently rebound in full modern speckled calf, gitl borders on covers, spine ornately gilt in compartments, red morocco label; some few leaves and plates stained mainly at margins, some light spotting and staining, inner margin of last leaf repaired, but a very attractive copy Girard Desargues (21 February 1591 – September 1661) was a French mathematician and engineer, who is considered one of the founders of projective geometry. Desargues' theorem, the Desargues graph, and the crater Desargues on the Moon are named in his honour. Martin Kemp in The Science of Art (Yale, 1990), states that Desargues' "greatest perspectivist and projective geometer of his generation... Desargues was a civil and military engineer, an architect specialising in staircase design and above all a geometer of extraordinary spatial vision. His intellectual ambition was expressed in two closely-related aspirations: the building of a geometry of position (i.e. non-metrical) based on projective techniques; and the provision of all-embracing methods of geometrical operation for practitioners in various fields ... In 1643, Bosse brought out the first of the publications in which he expounded Desargue's views. These consisted of treatises devoted to -- manières universelles -- for the cutting of stones in architectures according to the principles of projective geometry and the making of sundials, etc." Berlin Kat. 4716; Brunet I, 1127; Cicognara 817; Fowler 56; Lalande p.216. Copies in Glasgow; Cornell, Iowa State, Princeton, Wisconsin-Madison