Treatise on Conic Sections
Translated by Sir Thomas Little Heath
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The opening
THE CONE.
If a straight line indefinite in length, and passing always through a fixed point, be made to move round the circumference of a circle Avhich is not in the same plane with the point, so as to pass successively through every point of that circumference, the moving straight line will trace out the surface of a double cone, or two similar cones lying in opposite directions and meeting in the fixed point, which is the apex of each cone.
The circle about which the straight line moves is called the base of the cone lying between the said circle and the fixed point, and the axis is defined as the straight line drawn from the fixed point or the apex to the centre of the circle forming the base.
The cone so described is a scalene or oblique cone except in the particular case where the axis is perpendicular to the base. In this latter ca,se the cone is a right cone.
If a cone be cut by a plane passing through the apex, the resulting section is a triangle, two sides being straight lines lying on the surface of the cone and the third side being the straight line which is the intersection of the cutting plane and the plane of the base.
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About this edition
- The words
- Sir Thomas Little Heath's English translation, copied word for word.
- Left out
- Page numbers and running heads from the printed pages, in 10 places
- A preface, foreword or afterword, in 4 places
- The scanning library's stamps (University of California) and blank-page specks (7 blocks)
- The title page and opening pages before chapter 1, in 3 places
- Notes and pages added by translators, editors or publishers, in 8 places
- Printer's imprint (J. and C. F. Clay) and library marks (3 blocks)
- The printed table of contents (the app makes its own)
- The scanning library's stamp on the first page of the Conics, read as letters by the OCR (2 blocks)
- Printer's colophon (J. and C. F. Clay, at the University Press)
- The scanning library's end stamps and blank-page specks (29 blocks)
- A stray OCR fragment (', atid if') read beside the section heading on page 31, not part of any printed sentence there
- A figure's lettering or a scan speck read by the OCR as a line of text (229 blocks)