BULLETIN 
OF THE 
MATHEMATICAL SECTION. 
10TH MEETING. JANUARY 30, 1884. 
The Chairman presided. 
Seventeen members and guests present. 
The Section proceeded, under Rule 2, to the election of a Chair- 
man and a Secretary for the year 1884. On motion of Mr. 
_Exxiort, the rules governing the elections of the Society were 
adopted. The officers for 1883—Mr. Haut, as Chairman, and Mr. 
H. Farquuar, as Secretary—were re-elected, after each had briefly 
expressed a desire that the choice might fall on some one else. 
Mr. KumME t read an extract from a letter lately received from 
Mr. Artemas Martin, of Erie, Pennsylvania, in which the forma- 
tion of an American Mathematical Society was recommended. 
After some informal discussion, Mr. WinLock moved the appoint- 
ment of a special committee, with instructions to report on the 
advisability of taking steps for the formation of such a society. 
On motion of Mr. Exxiort, the matter was postponed. 
Mr. KuMMELL then made a communication on 
CURVES SIMILAR TO THEIR EVOLUTES, 
in which he made use of the intrinsic equation, and showed this prop- 
erty to belong to a whole class, of which the logarithmic spiral 
is at one extreme and the cycloids are at the other.* 
* Prof. Benjamin Peirce solved a problem almost identical with this one, 
in Gill’s Mathematical Miscellany for May, 1839, by essentially the same 
methods. This solution, which had not been seen by Mr. Kummell at the 
time of reading his paper, is believed to contain the first use of what has 
since become known as the “intrinsic equation.”’ 
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