Om Materialprøvningens Udvikling i Norden
Og om Statsprøveanstaltens Virksomhed

108 title: Resolution des quatres principaux problemes d’architecture. The fourth problem is herein called: Trouver la ligne sur laquelle les poutres doivent étre coupées en leur hauteur et largeur pour les rendre partout également fortes et résistantes. The first part of it is called: Premier discours on F. B. epistola ad P. W.1), in qua Celebris Galilæi propositio discutitur circa naturam . . which means: »F. B.’s letter to P. W., in which is discussed Galileo’s celebrated sentence about the form of the line after which beams are to be fashioned so as to be all over of the same power of resistance, and in which it is proved that the mentioned line is not parabolic as Galileo thought but elliptic«. In this treatise we find page 478: »Perjucunda mihi profecto fuit elegantissima narratio de ad- »mirabili illa machina qua in Colossicoteri tui Leonis Hyperborei »constructione uti te dicis, et magnopere me delectat ista con- »templatio intricatissimæ illius tignorum, rudentum et ferramen- »torum compagis quæ rectoris imperio ingenioque ita se præstat »obsequ entern«. At the translation of this the word »Colossicoterum« gives some difficulties. But of the following it seems however to ap- pear that the matter in question is ship-building and possibly the word may mean the hull and »Leo hyperboreus« i. e. the nor them Lion, may be the name of a ship. In that case the trans- lation would run: »Your elegant narration about the remarkable machine which »you say you are using at the construction of the hull »of the »The Northern Lion« was in truth very agreeable to me and T »was highly delighted at the contemplation of the very intri- »cated joining of beams, ropes, and ironwork which prove so »obsequious to the director’s orders and genius«. Further we find page 478: Quod autem scribis, sectas a te ex præscripto Galilæi linea »parabolica secundum altitudinem trabes, ut æqualis ubique This letter is dated 1657, pridie Idus Sextilis, 12. August. When Poggendorf in his Wörterbuch vol. 1 under Blondel states an article of him: Sur la resistance des solides in Mem.. Par. T. 1 (surely to be understood as Mé- moires dc l’Academie de Paris) this must to Fridericia's opinion be wrong, as such an article is not to be found in T. 1 but in T. 5.