Abstract
THERE is scarcely any branch of modern science which has of recent years made such progress as geometry: there is certainly no branch over the purport of which there is so much obscurity or has been so much discussion. On the one hand, geometry, like most sciences, was born of a practical need. The Egyptians,2 an eminently practical people, were not interested like the Greeks in the properties of the circle for the circle's own sake, but they wanted an art to measure the capacity of their barns and the size of their haystacks, and to plan out their pyramids and great buildings. But above all they were landowners, and to sell property they required to measure land—to measure it in square feet, and not by the time that a yoke of oxen would take to plough it, which was not always an exact or convenient test. So the Egyptians invented land-measuring or surveying, and termed it geometry, and the geometricians they called rope-stretchers. Thus in the doggrel of an old text-book:—
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
The Applications of Geometry to Practical Life1. Nature 43, 273–276 (1891). https://doi.org/10.1038/043273a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/043273a0