GAUSS'S ABSTRACT OF THE DISQUISITIONES GENERALES CIRCA
SUPERFICIES CURVAS, PRESENTED TO THE ROYAL
SOCIETY OF GOTTINGEN.
Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen. No. 177. Pages 1761-1768. 1827. November 5.
On the 8th of October, Hofrath Gauss presented to the Royal Society a paper:
Disquisitiones generales circa superficies curvas.
Although geometers have given much attention to general investigations of curved surfaces and their results cover a significant portion of the domain of higher geometry, this subject is still so far from being exhausted, that it can well be said that, up to this time, but a small portion of an exceedingly fruitful field has been cultivated. Through the solution of the problem, to find all representations of a given surface upon another in which the smallest elements remain unchanged, the author sought some years ago to give a new phase to this study. The purpose of the present discussion is further to open up other new points of view and to develop some of the new truths which thus become accessible. We shall here give an account of those things which can be made intelligible in a few words. But we wish to remark at the outset that the new theorems as well as the presentations of new ideas, if the greatest generality is to be attained, are still partly in need of some limitations or closer determinations, which must be omitted here.
In researches in which an infinity of directions of straight lines in space is concerned, it is advantageous to represent these directions by means of those points upon a fixed sphere, which are the end points of the radii drawn parallel to the lines. The centre and the radius of this auxiliary sphere are here quite arbitrary. The radius may be taken equal to unity. This procedure agrees fundamentally with that which is constantly employed in astronomy, where all directions are referred to a fictitious celestial sphere of infinite radius. Spherical trigonometry and certain other theorems, to which the author has added a new one of frequent application, then serve for the solution of the problems which the comparison of the various directions involved can present.
