Monday, February 7, 2011

Math: A Classic Reborn

All the talk of the long S last week reminded me of a classic math book. Actually it's a classic version of a classic text.

Euclid's Elements is a 13 book classic on geometry and math. In 1847 Oliver Byrne created a version of the first 6 books in which he used colours to indicate the different elements in a drawing instead of using letters and other labels. A scanned public domain version of the book is available thanks to the Mathematics Department of the University of British Columbia.

It may take a few minutes to get to used to the long Ss but after that... it's relatively smooth sailing. Now why didn't texts like this end up as part of my education?

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