Re: [HM] x,y,z

Udai Venedem (venedem@wanadoo.fr)
Tue, 30 Nov 1999 22:18:58 +0100

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Dear Jim (James Propp <propp@math.wisc.edu>),
I am pleased to append to the precisions given by Samuel S. Kutler and by
Julio Gonzalez Cabillon, a contribution for your question on the developing
of analytic geometry in the third dimension.
In Francis van Schooten's "Sectiones tringinta miscellaneas" (Leyde 1657),
you should read, p. 475-480 (pagination of Schooten's collective
"Exercitationum mathematicarum libri quinque", same place, same date, in
which only - to my knowledge - it is found) the "de lineas curvis superiorum
generum" due to John Hudde, which appears to be the first use of two
coordinates applying to curves projected from space to the plane. This may
well have been the trampoline jump towards the introduction of a third
coordinate.
Udai Venedem
venedem@wanadoo.fr
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/alta.mathematica/
catalogues of collector's books in mathematics and science.

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