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Robert Simson's Euclid
Posted:
Jul 13, 2009 8:21 AM
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Friends,
Anyone who has read the notes in Heath's edition of Euclid's Elements
is familiar with the name of Robert Simson whom Heath treats with the
greatest respect. I never expected to see a copy of Simson's Elements
of Euclid, but now have one, or rather a pdf scanned and made
available to me free by the evil, greedy capitalists at Google. You
may find this at: http://books.google.com/books?id=ZacAAAAAMAAJ .
This seems to be the thirteenth edition (1806) although printed in
1821 in Philadelphia. The original is from the NY Public Library and
seems to be in rather poor condition. There are several pages missing.
The file is named The_Elements_of_Euclid.pdf but is actually misnamed
because the book contains also Euclid's Data, which is otherwise very
difficult to find. There are some pages missing, which, unfortunately
includes the definitions. Fortunately these (alone) are available in
Ivor Thomas Greek Mathematical Works. Also Heath mentions most of
them in his History of Greek Mathematics vol. 1.
I should mention here Marinus Taisbak's book Dedomena. I had it from
the library some years ago and can recommend it. He provides all the
Greek and an excellent English translation. His commentary would be
illuminating, if I understood it.
Simson's book provides no table of contents, and since it is clumsy to
navigate in a pdf, I made a table of contents below which you may find
useful.
Regards, Bob
Robert Eldon Taylor
philologos at mindspring dot com
Contents of Simson's Euclid
The_Elements_of_Euclid.pdf
Book PDF
page page
Title i 10
Preface iii 12
Bk I 7 16
Bk II 49 56
missing 64-65
Bk III-prop 1. 66 71
Bk IV 100 105
Bk V 117 122
missing 150-151
Bk VI 153 154
Bk XI 194 193
Bk XII 250 249
Notes 293 290
missing pages 334-335
missing pages 340-341
page 342 printed as 432
page 349 printed as 340
Euclid's Data 361 354
Preface 363 356
missing pages 364-365
Def. X 366 357
Notes on Data 461 450
Plane & Spherical 477 466
Plane 479 468
Spherical 514 503
last page 505
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