Tournès, Dominique [Riccati, Vincenzo] The tractional construction of differential equations. (La construction tractionnelle des équations différentielles.) (French) Zbl 1195.01002 Collection Sciences dans l’Histoire. Paris: Librairie Scientifique et Technique Albert Blanchard (ISBN 978-2-85367-247-4/pbk). viii, 407 p. (2009). This is mainly a historical study of mechanical and graphical solutions of differential equations, from the seventeenth century to the present. Much attention is given to the Riccati family.There is a seventy-page appendix containing the Italian translation of the 1752 Memoir (in Latin) by Vincenzo Riccati (1707–1775), On the Use of Tractional Motion in the Construction of Differential Equations. Riccati was a mathematician and hydraulic engineer, who also made a thorough study of hyperbolic equations. His father, Jacopo, was a broadly educated Venetian scientist and mathematician, for whom the Riccati equation was named. The other chapters of the book are devoted to a variety of topics, primarily involving differential equations and their mechanical solution. There is extensive coverage of the Riccati contributions, ample mention of work on planimeters for calculating planar areas, and a chapter on Ernesto Pascal (1865–1940) and his disciples. A final chapter deals with various work by Czuber, Sobotka, and Kojimbo.The book ends with an eighteen-page Bibliography. Reviewer: Elliott Mendelson (Flushing) Cited in 11 Documents MSC: 01-02 Research exposition (monographs, survey articles) pertaining to history and biography 34-03 History of ordinary differential equations 65-03 History of numerical analysis 35Q99 Partial differential equations of mathematical physics and other areas of application 65S05 Graphical methods in numerical analysis 01A75 Collected or selected works; reprintings or translations of classics Keywords:tractional motion; mechanical integration; Riccati equation; hatchet (Prytz, stang) planimeter Biographic References: Riccati, Vincenzo; Pascal, Ernesto PDFBibTeX XMLCite \textit{D. Tournès}, La construction tractionnelle des équations différentielles. Paris: Librairie Scientifique et Technique Albert Blanchard (2009; Zbl 1195.01002)