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4to, 275 x 208 mms., pp. [ii], xii, 240, engraved frontispiece, additional engraved title-page, 121 engraved plates, contemporary half calf, marbled boards (rubbed), new morocco label; plates foxed, front joint amateurishly repaired and still a bit tender, but a respectable copy. The text is preceded by a "Memoir" of the Scottish engineer, Peter Nicholson (1765 - 1844), whose skills led him to publish The Carpenter's New Guide (1792), for which he engraved his own plates. Later, he published a number of books on building and the practical deployment of architectural principles. Treve Rosoman in his ODNB entry notes, "Nicholson's great gift as a mathematician was his ability to simplify and generalize traditional methods as well as inventing new ones. The rules that he formulated for finding sections of prisms, cylinders, or cylindroids enabled joiners to construct the great sweeping, curved staircases that were so fashionable in the early nineteenth century with much greater ease, speed, and economy of timber. Nicholson was the first author to write about the practical creation of joints, and the hinging and hanging of doors and shutters. He was also the first to note that Grecian mouldings were conic in section and that the volutes of Ionic capitals should be composed of logarithmic spirals. The complexity of the geometry involved in setting out fine woodwork meant that Nicholson was writing for an informed audience rather than the novice, as he sometimes thought. It was, perhaps, for this reason that he wrote so many books on mathematics really to help the enthusiastic tradesman. Nicholson's books were also sold in America but despite, or perhaps because of, his use of Greek revival ornament, then so popular there, he became the subject of much plagiarism. As a result, he is perhaps not as well known in America as he should be.". Seller Inventory # 7398
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