A New Look at the So-Called Trammel of Archimedes

1. INTRODUCTION. STANDARD TRAMMEL. Figure 1a shows a line segment of fixed length whose ends slide along two perpendicular axes. It can be realized physically as a sliding ladder or as a sliding door moving with its ends on two perpendicular tracks. During the motion, a fixed point on the segment traces an ellipse with one quarter of the ellipse in each quadrant (Figure 1b), so this device is called an ellipsograph, a mechanism for drawing an ellipse.