growth of which I need not enter, been able to bring about any common method of treatment for applied Kinematics. Something still remains doubtful, and the results obtained have correspondingly been uncertain. Even those who wish to employ pure scientific methods only seem to be convinced that such methods cannot be used in the applied part of the science. They fall into Redtenbacher's nihilism, and cut "Cinématique pure" away from "Cinématique appliquée." Résals' Cinématique pure (1861) is an example of this,—it shows that the evaporation, as it were, of kinematic problems into those of pure mechanics can scarcely, with such a method of treatment, be avoided.
Moreover, as a further fruit of this uncertainty there has been an attempt to construct another special study which demands mention. This is the so-called Automatics, the study of the realization in mechanism of motions either supposed or given by mathematical expressions. For this further attempt at separation we have to thank the engineer E. Stamm, who wishes again to subdivide his subject into pure and applied parts, as fully described in his Essai sur l'automatique pure, 1863. Stamm has earned considerable distinction in connection with the self-acting spinning-machine,—that is to say in a special case of applied Kinematics,—which those technically concerned know how to appreciate. His separation of Automatics from the science to which it belongs must, however, be considered unpractical; it cannot exist by itself,—it is only a portion of a synthetic method based upon the fundamental laws of Kinematics, to which science it therefore belongs inseparably.
We have reached the end of our literary review.[1] We have found, on the one hand, a most unsatisfactory confusion of attempts to find a form for one and the same circle of ideas. As many systems as authors, no resting point reached, always new trying and seeking,—and as a conclusion we have Ampère's well-defined science split into two, indeed into four sciences, as if it were one of those Infusoria which are propagated by division. On the other hand, we may make the consolatory remark that the observations have grown more and more in exactness and delicacy, as also that both the methods of examination and the mechanisms examined
- ↑ The work of Prof. Rankine in connection with Machine-Kinematics, which was in some respects remarkable, I have mentioned in a note at the end of the Introduction.
