Note 64 — PAPER 27

Phillipe Louis Lanz and Augustin de Bétancourt, Essai sur la composition des machines, Paris, 1808. Hachette's chart and an outline of his elementary course on machines is bound with the Princeton University Library copy of the Lanz and Bétancourt work. This copy probably represents the first textbook of kinematics. Bétancourt was born in 1760 in Teneriffe, attended the military school in Madrid, and became inspector-general of Spanish roads and canals. He was in England before 1789, learning how to build Watt engines, and he introduced the engines to Paris in 1790 (see Farey, op. cit.,, p. 655). He entered Russian service in 1808 and died in St. Petersburg in 1826 (J. C. Poggendorff, Biographisches-literarisches Handwörterbuch für Mathematik ..., Leipzig, 1863, vol. 1.