Durand's rules for approximate integration (Q582263)

A short biography of William F. Durand (1859-1958), a leading naval and aeronautical engineer of his time who developed many practical numerical algorithms in pre-computer times. The author studies in particular the motivation for the integration rule [N equal intervals of length h]: \[ I=h\{.4(f_ 0+f_ N)+1.1(f_ 1+f_{N-1})+\sum_{1<i<N-1}f_ i\} \] which combines the case of the trapezoidal rule with almost the precision of Simpson's rule.