Kinematics in the 20th Century

In this chapter we make some remarks about developments in the twentieth century. We saw in the preceding chapters that kinematics has its roots in geometry, mechanics and mechanical engineering. It is remarkable that in a sense it never released itself from its roots. It basically always remained a subordinate research area. It is striking that in this respect in the twentieth century the subject was mainly developed further as a research area in mechanical engineering. A number of mathematicians specialized in geometry played an important role in this.