Boris V. Trifonenko’s scientific contributions

The paper presents some information and photos dealing with mechanisms by the great Russian mathematician P.L. Chebyshev. These mechanisms are kept at the revived Cabinet of Practical Mechanics of the History of Physics and Mathematics Museum of St. Petersburg State University (SPBU). This revived cabinet is now located at the Mathematics and Mechanics Faculty of SPBU in Peterhof.

Franz Reuleaux (1829 - 1905) is a famous mechanical engineer, a Professor of the Berlin Royal Technical Academy. He became widely known as an engineer-scientist, a Professor and industrial consultant, education reformer and leader of the technical elite of Germany. He directed the design and manufacture of over 300 models of simple mechanisms. They were sold to many famous universities for pedagogical and scientific purposes. Today, the most complete set is at Cornell University, College of Engineering. In this article we discuss the history, the modern state and our using the Reuleaux models that survived at St. Petersburg State University for educational purposes. We present description of certain models and our electronic resource with these models. We provide the information of similar electronic resources from other universities.