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THE EARLIER HISTORY OF CONICS.

if we bear in mind (1) what we are told of the manner in which the earlier writers on couica produced the three curves from particular kind8 of right circular cones, and (2) the course followed by Apollonius (and Archimedes) in dealing with sections of tiny circular cone, wbether right or oblique. Eutocius, in his commentary on the Come. of ApolloniUB, quotes with approval a statement of Geminu8 to the effect that the ancients defined a cone 811 the surface described by the revolution of a rightangled triangle about one of the sides containing the right angle, and that they knew no other cones tban right cones. Of these they distinguished three kinds according as the vertical angle of the cone was leas than, equal to, or greater than, a right angle. Further they produced only one of the three sections from each kind of cone, always cutting it by a plane perpendicular to one of the generating linea, and calling the respective curves by names corresponding to the particular kind of cone; thus the cc eection of a right-angled cone" was their name for a parabola, tbe cceection of an acut&-angled cone" for an ellipse, and the U section of an obtuae-angled cone" for a hyperbola. The sections are 80 described by Archimedetr. Now clearly the parabola is the one of the three sections for the production of which the use of a right-angled CODe and a section at right angles to a generator gave the readiest means. If N be a point on the diameter BC of any circular section in such a cone, and if NP be a straight line drawn in the plane of the secti9n and perpendicular to BO, meeting the circumference of the circle (and therefore the surface of the cone) in P,

PN=BN.NC. Draw IN in the plane of the axial triangle OBC meeting the generator OB at right angles in .4, and draw .4D parallel to BC meeting 00 in D; let DEl', perpendicular to.4D or BO, meet BO in B and A4.N produced in F. Then A4.D is bisected by the axis of the cone, and therefore A4.F is likewise bisected by it. Draw C9 perpendicular to BC meeting .4F produced in 9. Now the angles BJN, BOG are right; therefore B,.4, 0, G are concyclic, and
BN. NO

=.4N. NG.

But

A4.N = CD-'G;