"The purpose of statics is to combine forces and determine the conditions for their equilibrium. This problem can be solved either with formulas or by geometrical constructions. Hence the division of general statics into two branches: analytical statics and graphical statics.
In reality, at least for now, the scope of graphical statics is much narrower: this recent branch of science is chiefly concerned with solving, by graphical means, the most common problems involving the stability of structures and the strength of materials."
Paradoxically, as the mathematician Eugène Rouché explained in his *Éléments de statique graphique*, published in 1889, graphical statics was a new discipline in his day, although its origins reached much further back. In France, it was first taught in 1874, in a course given by the engineer Maurice Levy.
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