Blaise Pascal
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Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic writer.
Portrait of Pascal in 1691
An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
Pascal studying the cycloid, by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Louvre
Puy de Dôme
Conic section
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A conic section, conic or a quadratic curve is a curve obtained from a cone's surface intersecting a plane. The three types of conic section are the hyperbola, the parabola, and the ellipse; the circle is a special case of the ellipse, though it was sometimes called as a fourth type. The ancient Greek mathematicians studied conic sections, culminating around 200 BC with Apollonius of Perga's systematic work on their properties.
This diagram clarifies the different angles of the cutting planes that result in the different properties of the three types of conic section.
Types of conic sections: 1: Circle 2: Ellipse 3: Parabola 4: Hyperbola
Diagram from Apollonius' Conics, in a 9th-century Arabic translation
Table of conics, Cyclopaedia, 1728