This book has been written as a companion volume to my book on Dynamics published a few years ago and is intended mainly for the same class of students, namely, for mathematical specialists in the higher divisions of schools and for students preparing for a degree in mathematics in the Universities. It is based in part upon courses of lectures given during many years to first-year students preparing for the Mathematical Tripos; and though many readers will already possess some knowledge of the subject, no such knowledge is assumed and an attempt has been made in the early chapters to present the subject in as simple a way as possible and with very detailed explanations.

The book deals with all those parts of the subject which are usually covered by the term Elementary Statics, with special attention to Graphical Statics, Friction and Virtual Work. For the use of more advanced students there are also chapters on the statics of flexible strings and the bending of rods, and the book concludes with a brief account of force systems in there dimensions.

There are nearly five hundred examples for solution taken mainly from papers set in either Scholarship, College, Intercollegiate or Tripos Examinations, and their sources are indicated by the letters S, C, I and T. More than a hundred examples are solved in the text, sometimes by alternative methods.

It has become the fashion of late to express mechanical relations in the symbolism of vector algebra and to use the methods of vector algebra in proving mechanical theorems.