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The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid Oliver Byrne (VARIA)

Werner Oechslin, Petra Lamers-Schutze · 4 HN comments
HN Books has aggregated all Hacker News stories and comments that mention "The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid Oliver Byrne (VARIA)" by Werner Oechslin, Petra Lamers-Schutze.
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Amazon Summary
A rare and beautiful geometry primer from the 19th century Red, yellow, blue – and of course black – are the colours that Oliver Byrne employs for the figures and diagrams in his most unusual 1847 edition of Euclid, published by William Pickering and printed by Chiswick Press, and which prompt the surprised reader to think of Mondrian. The author makes it clear in his subtitle that this is a didactic measure intended to distinguish his edition from all others: "The Elements of Euclid in which coloured diagrams and symbols are used instead of letters for the greater ease of learners." Byrne is not content to trust solely in the supposed intuitive “logical” structure of Euclid’s axioms and theorems – who doesn’t know the first famous sentences of Euclid’s Elements : “I. A point is that which has no parts. II. A line is length without breadth”? –, but translates them into colourful diagrams and symbols. He thereby thinks in terms of the school classroom: he compares his colours to the dyed chalks in which figures are drawn on the blackboard. Oliver Byrne (c. 1810–c. 1880) was an Irish author and civil engineer. Little is known about his life, though he wrote a considerable number of books. As Surveyor of Her Majesty's Settlements in the Falkland Islands, Byrne had already published mathematical and engineering works, but never anything like his edition on Euclid. This remarkable example of Victorian printing has been described as one of the oddest and most beautiful books of the 19th century. Each proposition is set in Caslon italic, with a four-line initial, while the rest of the page is a unique riot of red, yellow and blue. On some pages, letters and numbers only are printed in colour, sprinkled over the pages like tiny wild flowers and demanding the most meticulous alignment of the different colour plates for printing. Elsewhere, solid squares, triangles and circles are printed in bright colours, expressing a verve not seen again on the pages of a book until the era of Dufy, Matisse and Derain.
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This is a stretch, but this might amuse you (or anyone looking at this thread): http://www.amazon.com/Six-Books-Euclid-Werner-Oechslin/dp/38... (not an affiliate link) Some more information: http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/classics/all/06724...

Check the sample pages. This is a (very good) reproduction of the original, you can read about the history of it online/in Amazon reviews.

⬐
A beautiful reprint of this book is available from Taschen in a clamshell case: http://www.amazon.com/Six-Books-Euclid-Werner-Oechslin/dp/38...
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This special edition Euclid is once again available and well done-- nicely printed, the colours really stand out, and it comes in a 'clamshell' binding:

http://www.amazon.com/Six-Books-Euclid-Werner-Oechslin/dp/38...

I submitted this because I've been poking around in my Dover edition of Euclid. Then, yesterday, I found this site. To me it's like what Edward Tufte would do if he published Euclid (Byrne was a 19th-century civil engineer and surveyor from Ireland).

To my delight, I noticed that Taschen has republished this wonderful edition, so I ordered it from Amazon and I'm now awaiting delivery so I can peruse it, enjoy it, and keep it for my children's future math education:

http://www.amazon.com/Six-Books-Euclid-Werner-Oechslin/dp/38...

⬐ nandemo
It looks beautiful but the font is awkward to read. In particular "s" looks like an "f".
⬐ wyclif
No, that's a long "s", not an "f": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s
⬐ zbyszek
I used to have facsimile editions of Defoe's novels, replete with these long s's, and found that the unfamiliarity soon fades and you cease to notice them.
⬐ Alex63
Doesn't Tufte in fact use Byrne's graphic proof of the Pythagorean Theorem in one his books? If I were at home I could check, but I think it's in Visual Explanations.
⬐ bmm6o
This is mentioned near the bottom of the linked page.
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