Page:A History of Mathematics (1893).djvu/60

 Cicero was in Syracuse, he found the tomb buried under rubbish.

Archimedes was admired by his fellow-citizens chiefly for his mechanical inventions; he himself prized far more highly his discoveries in pure science. He declared that "every kind of art which was connected with daily needs was ignoble and vulgar." Some of his works have been lost. The following are the extant books, arranged approximately in chronological order: 1. Two books on Equiponderance of Planes or Centres of Plane Gravities, between which is inserted his treatise on the Quadrature of the Parabola; 2. Two books on the Sphere and Cylinder; 3. The Measurement of the Circle; 4. On Spirals; 5. Conoids and Spheroids; 6. The Sand-Counter; 7. Two books on Floating Bodies; 8. Fifteen Lemmas.

In the book on the Measurement of the Circle, Archimedes proves first that the area of a circle is equal to that of a right triangle having the length of the circumference for its base, and the radius for its altitude. In this he assumes that there exists a straight line equal in length to the circumference—an assumption objected to by some ancient critics, on the ground that it is not evident that a straight line can equal a curved one. The finding of such a line was the next problem. He first finds an upper limit to the ratio of the circumference to the diameter, or $$\scriptstyle{\pi}$$. To do this, he starts with an equilateral triangle of which the base is a tangent and the vertex is the centre of the circle. By successively bisecting the angle at the centre, by comparing ratios, and by taking the irrational square roots always a little too small, he finally arrived at the conclusion that $$\scriptstyle{\pi<3 \frac {1}{7}}$$. Next he finds a lower limit by inscribing in the circle regular polygons of 6, 12, 24, 48, 96 sides, finding for each successive polygon its perimeter, which is, of course, always less than the circumference. Thus he finally concludes that "the circumference of a circle