In his letter in the March 1995 issue of the Gazette (79, p. 123), John Sharp points out that the correct viewing position for a picture is with the eye opposite the central vanishing point, that is, on the normal to the picture plane at the point of meeting of all lines in the scene represented that are perpendicular to the picture plane. In order to obtain a true view of the scene depicted, it is also necessary that the eye be placed at the correct distance from the picture.

E. H. Neville was Librarian of the Mathematical Association for over thirty years, from 1923 to 1954.For more than half of that time Neville was not only Librarian but custodian of the books which were handsomely shelved and displayed in his own home, first in his house on Castle Hill, Reading, and then in his first house in Sonning.

Mathematics at all levels depends on infinite processes. This is a “fact of life”. But, like those other “facts of life”, this one has traditionally been hushed up—especially when teaching elementary mathematics to beginners. Of course, in our liberated age, adult mathematicians are no longer embarrassed by infinite processes, and even discuss them openly. But it is not easy to see the connection between the way they discuss infinite processes (as in, say, an undergraduate analysis course) and those parts of elementary mathematics which depend on infinite processes, and which should provide the soil in which the beginner’s seedling intuitions about infinite processes can take root. So even today most children, adolescents, and their teachers must either make do with the traditional smutty versions, or work things out for themselves.

I am unable to answer Ian Cook’s query (Gazette, note 65.25) concerning the original discoverer of the construction which he quotes from Nicholson’s Carpenter’s new guide, but readers may be interested in learning more about Peter Nicholson, who is variously described in his own books and in biographies as: architect, carpenter, surveyor, practical builder and private teacher of the mathematics.