Download or read book Coulomb's Memoir on Statics written by Jacques Heyman and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 1997 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Coulomb read his Essai on ?some statical problems? to the French Academy in 1773. It is a document of great importance in the history of engineering since it laid the foundations of the modern science of soil mechanics and also discussed three other major problems of eighteenth-century civil engineering: the bending of beams, the fracture of columns and the calculation of abutment thrusts developed by masonry arches.Professor Heyman's book makes the Essai accessible to a wide range of engineers and historians of technology. It is here reproduced in full with an annotated English translation, a chapter elucidating Coulomb's references and with full discussion of the technical problems it treats. It concludes with some brief historical notes on Coulomb's life and technical education in eighteenth-century France.