"The Way to Geometry" is a practical geometry manual by Petrus Ramus, translated and enlarged by William Bedwell. It addresses astronomers, engineers, geographers, architects, surveyors, and craftsmen, explaining geometrical principles and their applications. It is worth listening to for its glimpse into early modern mathematical teaching and practical measurement.
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Cover illustration generated by AI.
Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
Transcriber's
note:
Several few typographical errors have been corrected.
They appear in the text like this, and the explanation will appear when the mouse pointer is moved over the marked passage. Cases which could conceivably be genuine variable orthography have been retained as printed. Many corrections are actually part of the arguments: no guarantee is given that all such errors in the text have been found and corrected.
In the original, 20 pages were printed with out-ofsequence page numbers, the numbers as printed being repeated in the index. These have been retained as printed but marked with an asterisk to distinguish them from the in-sequence pages which have the same number, thus 249*
Mixed fractions have been consistently transcribed as e.g. 5.5/96 although the period is not always present in the printed text (this avoids possible confusion of a hyphen, as 5-5/96, with a minus sign). The plus and minus signs in the printed text are apparently indistinguishable dashes - they have been transcribed as '+' and '-' as the context requires.
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