Projection pencils of quadrics and Ivory's theorem (Q434305)

The planar Euclidean version of Ivory's theorem (first published in 1809) states that the two diagonals of a certain curvilinear quadrangle formed by four confocal conics have the same length. This theorem was important for physics and mechanics and attracts the attention of specialists in mechanics even today, see [\textit{V. V. Kozlov}, Mosc. Univ. Mech. Bull. 55, No. 5, 16--20 (2000; Zbl 1074.37500)]. The author introduces a definition of the confocality of conics in a projective space which includes both the standard version and the one in [\textit{H. Stachel} and \textit{J. Wallner}, Sib. Math. J. 45, No. 4, 785--794 (2004; Zbl 1051.51012)] as special cases and proves a generalization of Ivory's theorem using this definition. The author basically follows the building-up of the above-cited paper by H. Stachel and J. Wallner, uses its terminology, statements and proofs which are based on the properties of selfadjoint regular endomorphisms. The author proves only the results which are not immediate consequences of the previous ones.