Abstract
THE construction of magic squares is an amusement of great antiquity; we hear of them being constructed in India and in China before the Christian era, whilst they appear to have been introduced into Europe by Moschopulus, who flourished at Constantinople early in the fifteenth century. On the diagram you see a simple example of a magic square, one celebrated as being drawn by Albert Dürer in his picture of “Melancholy,” painted about the year 1500 (Fig. 1). It is one of the fourth order, involving 16 compartments or cells. In describing such squares, the horizontal lines of cells are called “rows,” the vertical lines “columns,” and the oblique lines going from corner to corner “diagonals.” In the 16 compartments are placed the first 16 numbers, 1, 2, 3,... 16, and the magic property consists in this, that the numbers are placed in such wise that the sum of the numbers in every row, column and diagonal is the same, viz., in this case, 34.
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Magic Squares and other Problems Upon a Chess-Board 1 . Nature 65, 447–452 (1902). https://doi.org/10.1038/065447a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/065447a0