From completeness to Archimedean completeness. An essay in the foundations of Euclidean geometry (Q1293012)

David Hilbert introduced his axiom of completeness in order to distinguish ``ordinary analytic geometry'' from the remaining models of Archimedean Euclidean geometry. In the present essay the author considers the Archimedean complete ordered number systems introduced by Hans Hahn in the year 1907. He shows how the completeness and embedding properties for Hahn's ordered number systems can be exploited in order to obtain an understanding for models of Euclidean geometry more generally.