Pascal's Theorem/Historical Note
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Historical Note on Pascal's Theorem
Pascal's Theorem was discovered by Blaise Pascal when he was in his mid-teens, in the wake of his encounter with Euclid's The Elements.
He published it in his Essay pour les Coniques, which contains $400$ or so corollaries deduced from it, formed by allowing pairs of the six points involved to merge into coincidence.
James Joseph Sylvester called this theorem:
- a sort of cat's cradle.
Sources
- 1937: Eric Temple Bell: Men of Mathematics ... (previous) ... (next): Chapter $\text{V}$: "Greatness and Misery of Man"