The beginnings of elasticity and interaction with the development of the Calculus in Mechanics and architecture, between epistéme and téchne, ed Anna Sinopoli

We all know that Galileo imagined at least two problems that will later on concern elasticity, namely the problem of the hanging chain or catenaria and the fracture of the built in beam which will lead to the study of the deflection of such a beam known as elastica. The author starts the story of those problems in 1684, with the publication of two papers by Leibniz. The first one is the famous Nova methodus, where Leibniz gave the principal ideas for the differential and integral Calculus. The second paper is providing “new demonstrations on the resistance of bodies”, (Demonstrationes novae de resistentia solidorum), where he explained that before breaking, the beam is deflected. So he gave a model of deflection, using Hooke’s law of extension Leibniz’ model will give Jacob Bernoulli the possibility of applying the Calculus to the deflection of a beam.