Catenary (from the Latin catena, or chain) is the name given to the curve formed when you hang a piece of chain from two points. That’s exactly the process pre-modern builders used to determine the ...

Physicist and mathematician Giovanni Poleni’s drawing (left) of Robert Hooke’s analogy between an arch and a hanging chain, and (right) his analysis of the Dome of St. Peter’s in Rome. Hooke famously ...