The book was enthusiastically reviewed by the weekly London journal Engineering,[82] and it was given lengthy notice by the rival journal, The Engineer. The editor of The Engineer thought that the mechanician would find in it many new ideas, that he would be "taught to detect hitherto hidden resemblances, and that he must part—reluctantly, perhaps—with many of his old notions." "But," added the editor with considerable justice, "that he [the mechanician] would suddenly recognize in Professor Reuleaux's 'kinematic notation,' 'analysis,' and 'synthesis,' the long-felt want of his professional existence we do not for a moment believe."[83] Indeed, the fresh and sharp ideas of Reuleaux were somewhat clouded by a long (600-page) presentation; and his kinematic notation, which required another attempt at classification, did not simplify the presentation of radically new ideas.[84]
[ [82] Engineering, loc. cit. (footnote 77).
[ [83] The Engineer, London, March 30 and April 13, 1877, vol. 43, pp. 211-212, 247-248.
[ [84] It is perhaps significant that the first paper of the First Conference on Mechanisms at Purdue University was Allen S. Hall's "Mechanisms and Their Classification," which appeared in Machine Design, December 1953, vol. 25, pp. 174-180. The place of classification in kinematic synthesis is suggested in Ferdinand Freudenstein's "Trends in Kinematics of Mechanisms," Applied Mechanics Reviews, September 1959, vol. 12, pp. 587-590.
Figure 31.—Alexander Blackie William Kennedy (1847-1928), translator of Reuleaux' Theoretische Kinematik and discoverer of Kennedy's "Law of Three Centers." From Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers (1907, vol. 167, frontispiece).
Nevertheless, no earlier author had seen the problem of kinematic analysis so clearly or had introduced so much that was fresh, new, and of lasting value.
Reuleaux was first to state the concept of the pair; by his concept of the expansion of pairs he was able to show similarities in mechanisms that had no apparent relation. He was first to recognize that the fixed link of a mechanism was kinematically the same as the movable links. This led him to the important notion of inversion of linkages, fixing successively the various links and thus changing the function of the mechanism. He devoted 40 pages to showing, with obvious delight, the kinematic identity of one design after another of rotary steam engines, demolishing for all time the fond hopes of ingenious but ill-informed inventors who think that improvements and advances in mechanism design consist in contortion and complexity.
The chapter on synthesis was likewise fresh, but it consisted of a discussion, not a system; and Reuleaux stressed the idea that I have mentioned above in connection with Willis' book, that synthesis will be successful in proportion to the designer's understanding and appreciation of analysis. Reuleaux tried to put the designer on the right track by showing him clearly "the essential simplicity of the means with which we have to work" and by demonstrating to him "that the many things which have to be done can be done with but few means, and that the principles underlying them all lie clearly before us."[85]
[ [85] Reuleaux, op. cit. (footnote 68), p. 582.