Abstract
IT is not often that one is able to trace a pedigree with such success as we have been able to achieve in the case of this little book. It appears from the title-page that it is reprinted in its present form from Van Nostrand's Magazine, having been translated from a series of articles by M. de Roos in the Revue Universelle des Mines. The latter gentleman admits his obligations for the major part of his work to a translation which appeared in the Revue Scientifique of November 24, 1874, of the well-known lecture delivered by Prof. Sylvester at the Royal Institution in the same year, which was based on M. Peaucellier's discovery described in the Nouvelles Annales of 1873, but contained a large amount of original matter. For the residue, with one exception, to which we shall presently return, M. de Roos appears to be indebted to a paper by M. Liguine, which he mentions without stating where it is to be found, and which, together with a memoir by M. Saint Loup referred to by M. Liguine, is apparently regarded as all that has been written on the subject since the publication of Prof. Sylvester's lecture. M. Liguine's paper is to be found in the Nouvelles Annales for 1875; it discusses Prof. Sylvester's lecture, the “contra-parallelogram”of Mr. Hart, the “kite”of Mr. Roberts, and one of Mr. Kempe's earliest linkages. The description of these discoveries of Mr. Hart and Mr. Roberts is stated by M. Liguine to have been obtained from an article by Prof. Sylvester in the Revue Scientifique in 1875, but no mention is made of the source from which a knowledge of Mr. Kempe's linkage is derived. There is, however, internal evidence that it is M. Antoine Breguet who published an article in the Revue Industrielte early in 1875, which discusses the discoveries of Messrs. Kempe and Hart referred to, and states that the writer's information is derived from their original articles in the Messenger of Mathematics of November, 1874.
Linkages.
By J. D. C. De Roos. Van Nostrand's Science Series, No. 47. 18mo, 87 pp. (New York, 1879.)
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Linkages . Nature 21, 441 (1880). https://doi.org/10.1038/021441a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/021441a0