Oliver Byrne was a civil engineer and prolific author of works on subjects including mathematics, geometry, and engineering. He is best known for his 'coloured' book of Euclid

Euclid

Euclid , fl. 300 BC, also known as Euclid of Alexandria, was a Greek mathematician, often referred to as the "Father of Geometry". He was active in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy I...

's Elements. He was a large contributor to Spon's Dictionary of Engineering. Augustus de Morgan

Augustus De Morgan

Augustus De Morgan was a British mathematician and logician. He formulated De Morgan's laws and introduced the term mathematical induction, making its idea rigorous. The crater De Morgan on the Moon is named after him....

 described him as a minor, rather eccentric British mathematician.

Family and early life

The 1871 English census lists Byrne's place of birth as Leyden, Holland.

He may have been related to Austin Byrne, who was another Irish Protestant civil engineer and author, and who named his second son Oliver Thomas. Another relative was William Byrne, of whom Oliver is said to have been an "eccentric clansman" who publicised William's "heroic reputation". http://homepage.eircom.net/~nobyrne/byrne.html

At age 20 he was appointed Professor of Mathematics in the College of Civil Engineers at Putney. His wife Eleanor (née Rugg), was 12 years younger than he was.

Byrne's Euclid

His most innovative educational work was a version of 'Euclid's Elements' which used coloured graphic explanations of each geometric principle. It was published by Pickering (publishers) in 1847.

The book has become the subject of renewed interest in recent years for its innovative graphic conception and its style which prefigures the modernist experiments of the Bauhaus

Bauhaus

', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...

 and De Stijl

De Stijl

De Stijl , propagating the group's theories. Next to van Doesburg, the group's principal members were the painters Piet Mondrian , Vilmos Huszár , and Bart van der Leck , and the architects Gerrit Rietveld , Robert van 't Hoff , and J.J.P. Oud...

 movements. Information design writer Edward Tufte

Edward Tufte

Edward Rolf Tufte is an American statistician and professor emeritus of political science, statistics, and computer science at Yale University. He is noted for his writings on information design and as a pioneer in the field of data visualization....

 refers to the book in his work on graphic design and McLean in his Victorian book design of 1963. In 2010 Taschen republished the work in a facsimile edition.
Byrne listed himself as a Mathematician, Civil Engineer, Military Engineer, and Mechanical Engineer and indicates on the title pages of one of his books that he was Surveyor of Queen Victoria's settlement in the Falkland Islands

Falkland Islands

The Falkland Islands are an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean, located about from the coast of mainland South America. The archipelago consists of East Falkland, West Falkland and 776 lesser islands. The capital, Stanley, is on East Falkland...

.

The U.S. Library of Congress

Library of Congress

The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

 has a steel-engraved portrait of Oliver Byrne.

A book of the collected works was published. He lists himself as a Professor in Norfolk, Virginia, U.S.A.

Engineering and inventions

He invented the following mechanical devices:

• The Byrnegraph
• The Gauger's Patent Calculating Instruments.

Oliver Byrne and Henry William Hull (BA, CE) made a proposal for a School of Mathematics, Engineering, Classics, and General Literature at Surrey Villa, near Lambeth Palace.

He was an anti-phrenologist, and wrote a book on the fallacy of phrenology

Phrenology

Phrenology is a pseudoscience primarily focused on measurements of the human skull, based on the concept that the brain is the organ of the mind, and that certain brain areas have localized, specific functions or modules...

.

Irish independence

In 1853 he wrote a book titled Freedom To Ireland published in Boston, advocating Irish revolt against British rule and outlining house and street fighting, handling of small arms, etc. In fact, he toured the U.S. in the 1850s. (See 1860 census record). Oliver toured the United States in the 1850s and published his "Freedom to Ireland'"" advocated revolt from Britain and provided lessons in the use of small arms, field fortifications, pike exercises and street fighting It was dedicated 'To the memory of William Byrne, Esq., of Ballymanus, County Wicklow, Ireland', and to the fulsome list of qualities attributed to the dedicatee was the rather dubious claim that Billy 'by the dextrous use of the Pike destroyed two thousand of his country's enemy; and out of twenty-seven engagements in the open field, won twenty-one.http://homepage.eircom.net/~nobyrne/byrne.html In the preface to one of his books, Oliver Byrne has the following dedication:

TO THE MEMORY OF WILLIAM BYRNE, ESQ;, OF BALLYMANUS, COUNTY WICKLOW, IRELAND, WHO WAS EXECUTED FOR FIDELITY AND LOYALTY TO HIS COUNTRY IN 1798 THIS WORK IS DEDICATED. BYRNE WAS A MAN OF LARGE FORTUNE AND ESTATES, OF RARE COURAGE, AND GREAT MILITARY SKILL, AND OF MUCH PERSONAL STRENGTH AND BEAUTY; HE DID NOT LOSE HIS LIFE AND ESTATES, OR BETRAY HIS COUNTRY, BY MAKING LONG SPEECHES TO TEACH THE ENEMY. HE WAS NOT ONE OF THE BEGARRLY BRIEFLASS SPOUTING POLITICAL TRICKSTER HUMBUGS; NO, BUT ONE WHO IN CONJUNCTION WITH HIS BROTHER GARRET BYRNE AND COUSIN MICHAEL DWYER, LED ON HIS COUNTRYMEN, AND BY THE DEXTERIOUS USE OF THE PIKE, DESTROYED 2000 OF HIS COUNTRY'S ENEMY; AND OUT OF 27 ENGAGEMENTS IN THE OPEN FIELD, WON TWENTY ONE....etc.3

The United Irishmen (who consisted of Protestants and Catholics alike) declared their belief in a peaceful future for Ireland in which Protestants and Catholics could live together in peace and with equality.

In 1871 Byrne lived at 14 Fransfield Grove, Upper Sydenham, in the Parish of Lewisham, in the Count of Kent.

Byrne died at 46 Grecian Street, East Maidstone, England.

Works

• The Apprentice or First Book for Mechanics, Machinists, and Engineers A. J. Fisher (New York) 1874
• The Practical, complete and correct Gager, containing a description of Parker and Byrne's patent Calculating Instruments; with their use and application, Bailey (London), 1840
• The Fifth Book of Euclid simplified, 1841.
• The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid in which coloured diagrams and symbols are used instead of letters for the greater ease of learners, 1847
• The Miscellaneous Mathematical Papers of OB, L. Maynard, ed. John Byrne, 1848.
• OB (ed) Appleton's Dictionary of machines, Mechanics, Engine work and Engineering, 2 vols, Daniel Appleton and Co., 1852.
• The Calculus of Form, 1870.
• The Creed of Saint Athanasius proved by a Mathematical parallel (a satire), 1859.
• Description and Use of the Byrnegraph, an instrument for multiplying, dividing and comparing lines, angles, surfaces and solids, Allard (London), 1846.
• Dual Arithmetic, A New Art, Bell & Daldy (London), 1865. (ISBN 978-1-141-92119-5)
• The Essential Elements of Practical Mechanics, based on the principal of work, designed for engineering students, Spon (London), 1868.
• General Method of Solving Equations of all degrees, applied particularly to equations of the second, third, fourth and fifth, Spon (London), 1868.
• The Geometry of Compasses: Or Problems Resolved By The Mere Description Of Circles, Lockwood (London), 1877. (ISBN 978-1-104-05805-0)
• The Handbook for the Artisan, Mechanic, and Engineer, Collins (Philadelphia), 1853.
• How to Measure the Earth with the Assistance of Railroads, Currie and Bowman (Newcastle), 1838.
• Lectures on the Art and Science of War, Donahoe (Boston), 1853.
• New and Improved Systems of Logarithms, Day (London), 1838.
• Pocketbook for Railroad and Civil Engineers, Shepherd (New York), 1851.
• The Practical Metal-Worker's assistant, Baird (Philadelphia), 1851. (ISBN 978-1-151-79618-9)
• The Practical Model Calculator, Baird (Philadelphia), 1852. (ISBN 978-1-145-93075-9)
• A Short Practical Treatise on Spherical trigonometry, Valpy, 1835. (ISBN 978-1-110-89691-2)
• Spon's Dictionary of Engineering, Spon, 1869–1874.
• Tables of Dual Logarithms, Dual Numbers, and corresponding Natural Numbers, Bell & Daldy, 1867
• Byrne's Treatise on navigation and nautical Astronomy, the author, 1875.
• The Young Dual Arithmetician, Bell & Daldy, 1865
• The Young Geometrician, or Practical geometry without compasses, Chapman and Hall (London), 1865. (ISBN 978-1-143-82512-5) (online edition from Google books)

External sources

• Byrne's edition of Euclid at University of British Columbia Mathematics Department and at archive.org
• Review of Taschen's edition of Byrn's Euclid from the Mathematical Association of America
• History corner: Byrne's Euclid, 1847 on the Science Project blog
• Examples of pages from Byrne's Euclid