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Abstract

IN the year 1871, Prof. Crofton, F.R.S., explained before the London Mathematical Society his diagrams illustrative of the stresses in Warren and lattice girders, and in the course of his remarks said that he had not found anything to help him in English text-books, and referred to papers by Profs. Rankine and Clerk-Maxwell. It was at this meeting (April 13) that Prof. Henrici drew attention to a work then little known in this country, viz. Culmann's “Graphische Statik”—“l'excellente ‘Graphische Statik’ de M. Culmann” (Prof. Cremona)—and showed that Prof. Crofton's constructions had been anticipated and the methods applied to a very wide range of subjects. On this occasion also Prof. Henrici illustrated the subject by a simple and ingenious notation. He subsequently drew up an abstract of Culmann's work (1866), which was printed in the Appendix to vol. iii. of the above-named Society's Proceedings (pp. 320–22). The work is now well known, and its methods are very generally employed by engineers, and are the subject of lectures in more than one of our Colleges.

The Elements of Graphical Arithmetic and Graphical Statics.

By John Y. Gray George Lowson (London and Glasgow: W. Collins, Sons, and Co., 1888.)