Maths and History
Historical episodes of mathematics, mainly before the 20th century
Jacques Besson and his theatre of mathematical instruments
In the mid-16th century, a French mathematician became fascinated with designing instruments born of his ingenious mind…
Punch cards: from Jacquard to Hollerith
Interfaces are a defining feature of our culture: the punch-card control system of the Jacquard loom transformed textile manufacturing. But who remembers it today? It was a first step towards the computer, which now governs how we interact with the world.
John Napier's astonishing inventions
John Napier of Merchiston, the Scottish gentleman whose death four centuries ago is being commemorated this year, was no revolutionary. Yet his wondrous invention of logarithms made him one, opening up a new world for mathematics far beyond computation.
Pascal's triangle: a thousand-year history | Tangente
"Pascal's triangle" may have been discovered by Indians more than two thousand years ago. It reached the Arab-Muslim world and China as early as the 11th century. It did not appear in Europe until the 16th century, when Blaise Pascal began to study it rigorously.
Astounding strophoids: curves and loci
Studied for nearly two centuries before acquiring their final name, strophoids have many interesting properties arising from their similarity under a particular type of transformation. They therefore appear as loci in several classic problems.
Curva ex machina: mechanisms and curves | Tangente
Do you know Kempe's universality theorem? This 19th-century result states that any algebraic curve can be drawn by a linkage. Today, computers and robotics have replaced the ingenious mechanisms devised by scientists of the past.