[BOSSE, Abraham; DESARGUES, Girard (1591-1661)]. La Maniere Universelle de Mr. Desargues Lyonnois, pour poser l' Essieu, & placer les heures & autres choses aux Cadrans au Soleil. A Paris, De l'Imprimerie de Pierre Des-Hayes, rue de la Harpe, a la Roze Rouge, M.DC.XLIII [1643].
Hardcover. First edition. Leather-bound. Octavo (185 x 110mm), [8], 28, [1], 68 pages + 34 leaves of plates. Signatures: 4 leaves unsigned, A-C⁴, D₁₂, 1 leaf unsigned, D₃₋₄, E-M⁴. French text. Engraved additional allegorical title, engraved dedication and sub-title, 66 full-page engraved illustrations. Contemporary calf, spine gilt. Condition: FAIR to GOOD. Collated complete. The hinges, spine ends and corners worn. Some light browning. Some inking to front blank.
Notes: First edition, beautifully illustrated by Abraham Bosse (1602-76), who was Desargues's most ardent propagandist. This is an important work in the "French perspective wars" from 1630-80. Desargues was the greatest perspectivist and projective geometer of his generation. Desargues was a civil and military engineer, an architect specialising in staircase design and above all a geometer of extraordinary spatial vision. His intellectual ambition was expressed in two closely-related aspirations: the building of a geometry of position (i.e. non-metrical) based on projective techniques; and the provision of all-embracing methods of geometrical operation for practitioners in various fields. In 1643, Bosse brought out the first of the publications in which he expounded Desargue's views. These consisted of treatises devoted to -- manières universelles -- for the cutting of stones in architectures according to the principles of projective geometry and the making of sundials, etc. These attracted new assaults, this time from an expert in stonecutting, Curabelle, who devoted three pamphlets to the criticism of Desargues's works. [Desargues: DSB, IV, pp.46-51; Bosse: DSB, II, pp. 333-34; The Science of Art, pp. 120-123; Brunet I, 1127].
