Continued and systematic analysis of the mechanics of flexible fibre
assemblies dates from about 1945, although the growth of research into
textiles after 1920 had included studies of fabric structure and the
measurement of mechanical properties. The subject is thus a young one,
although this NATO Advanced Study Institute is a sign of developing
maturity. However there is an earlier tradition. Relevant, even if
somewhat loosely connected, quotations can be found in the works of the
engineers of the ancient civilisations, recurring during the
llenaissance with Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo. But the glorious libk
is with Euler and the Bernoulli family, with their theories of the
mechanics of flexible slender rods. While mathematicians have admired
the beauty of this work, the invention of elliptic integrals, and the
grace of the different classes of planar elastica, it is in the
technology of textile materials, composed of flexible fibres and yarns,
that the subject has found its more direct application. All this, and
much more such as Max Born's doctoral thesis, was brought to our
attention in a delightful discourse by Milos Konopasek, who is not only
fascinated by the mathematics of Euler and the modern movement of the
solutions of bending curves from two dimensions into three by the use of
the computer, but also feels a personal link through having lived and
studied within sight of the scene of Euler's triumphs in St. Petersburg.