"There has been far too much invention of 'solvable problems' by the mathematical elastician; far too much neglect of the physical and technical problems which have been crying out for solution. Much of the ingenuity which has been spent on the ideal body of 'perfect' elasticity ideally loaded, might I believe have wrought miracles in the fields of physical and technical elasticity, where pressing practical problems remain in abundance unsolved. I have endeavoured... to abrogate this divorce between mathematical elasticity on the one hand, and physical and technical elasticity on the other. With this aim in view I have introduced the general conclusions of a considerable body of physical and technical memoirs, in the hope that by doing so I may bring the mathematician closer to the physicist and both to the practical engineer. I trust that in doing so I have rendered this History of value to a wider range of readers, and so increased the usefulness of Dr Todhunter's many years of patient historical research on the more purely mathematical side of elasticity. In this matter I have kept before me the labours of M. de Saint-Venant as a true guide to the functions of the ideal elastician."