De Witt, van Schooten, Newton and Huygens

DescartesDescartesRené lived from 1628 to 1649 in The Netherlands and his stay had quite an impact there. The Dutchman Frans van SchootenSchootenFrans van junior translated DescartesDescartesRené’ Geometry into Latin. Van SchootenSchootenFrans van also wrote a book on mechanisms to draw conic sections. His pupil and friend, the Dutch statesman Johan de WittWittJan de, wrote a book on conic sections on the basis of DescartesDescartesRené’ ideas. Through Van SchootenSchootenFrans van’s translation Newton got to know DescartesDescartesRené work. Thinking about curves in terms of their kinematical generation led Newton to his calculus. Motion also played a role in LeibnizLeibnizGottfried Wilhelm work on the calculus. We also briefly discuss the work of HuygensHuygensChristiaan and Newton on circular motion and HuygensHuygensChristiaan calculations on gear trainsGear trainsHuygens on.