Elementary Algebra: Embracing the First Principles of the Science.

Charles Davies

Published by A.S. Barnes & Co., New York, etc., 1851

About this Item

vii, [1], 279pp.; 7.5 x 5 in. *** Good. Extremities rubbed, splitting at bottom outside corner of front cover; two inches of separation at bottom of front joint; spine heavily rubbed but black leather spine label still bright; notes in pencil to all blank endpapers and flyleaves; text tight and sharp with light to moderate foxing. *** "Charles Davies was born in 1798, and raised in upstate New York. When he was fourteen, a recruiter for the new military school at West Point recognized his fine intelligence and offered him a place there. The War of 1812 was still going on when Davies went to West Point two years later, so he was rushed through in a year and a half, and commissioned. By the time he was eighteen, he was back at West Point teaching math. [.] [In his Mathematical Dictionary Davies] is as down-to-earth as it is sophisticated. Read his sections on calculus carefully and you'll end up knowing that subject. Davies thinks like a theoretician, yet he explains depth sounding, surveying, pantographs, and the topological riddle of how to most efficiently stack shot and shell on shipboard. If were to read this book cover to cover, I would reclaim much of what I knew when I finished graduate school, long ago. Yet Davies is also quirky. We find many of his books listed in the library catalog under the authors Bourdon and Legendre. Some cataloger got suckered in by the fact that Davies used names of famous French mathematicians on his title pages. He gives the impression that these are translations, rather than new American textbooks based ever-so-loosely upon the French. We still looked to Europe in the mid-19th century. We had yet to develop confidence in our own intellectual abilities. But Davies had all the mental horsepower needed to build a new country." [John H. Lienhard, The Engines of Our Ingenuity podcast].

Seller Inventory # ABE-1741566291595

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Elementary Algebra: Embracing the First Principles of the Science.
• Publisher: A.S. Barnes & Co., New York, etc.
• Publication Date: 1851
• Language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good
• Weight: 2 pounds
• Seller catalogs:
  • Education