GEOMETRY OF POSITION BY ROBERT H. GRAHAM AUTHOR OF GRAPHIC AND ANALYTIC STATICS London MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1891 All rights reserved PREFACE AT present there exists no work written in our language upon the interesting modern science to which both the French and Germans have given the title of geometry of position. An exception, perhaps, may be made in favour of Salmon's Conic Sections and Higher Plane Curves, which in certain chapters deal with a similar set of problems. But the analytical method of exposition, adopted and handled with such consummate skill by Salmon, is ill suited to bring into relief the useful aspects of the subject or to fully illustrate the great beauty and elegance of projective geometrical methods. Since the beginning of the present century, when Carnot first published a work on geometry of position, much time and labour have been devoted to its further development, notably by Poncelet, Staudt, Steiner, Cremona, Reye, Favaro, and others. Moreover, the recent invention of graphic statics has given new and additional importance to the subject with which it is so closely allied. On this account the study of geometry of position has been made compulsory in the Federal Polytechnic of Zürich, in Strasburg University, and in other Continental institutions. In |