W. W. Rouse Ball and the mathematics of string figures (Q465159)

In its fifth (1911) through ninth (1920) editions, W. W. Rouse Ball's \textit{Mathematical recreations and essays} devoted a chapter to string manipulations such as cat's cradle. He dropped this chapter from the book subsequent to the publication of his short monograph on the topic. The present article argues that while the chapter did not provide an explicit mathematical analysis, its treatment was implicitly mathematical. In particular, rather than organizing the material on an anthropological basis, as had been done by previous writers on the subject, Ball grouped together presentations of string figures based on their structures and the procedures that generated them.