More than two thousand years Archimedes, Appolonius of Perga and many another famed Greek geometrician tried to divide an arc into three equal parts with ruler & compass. Three hundred years ago, René Descartes (1650), father of analytic geometry, proved the feat was impossible by means of the Greek instruments.
Other mathematicians have solved the problem but only more complicated instruments. Last in Boston, George Hurd, retired manufacturer, and Professor Harold A. Zager, Boston College mathematician, claimed that Descartes was wrong, that after ten years' study they had not only trisected but had divided arcs into other fractions with ruler &...
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