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A problem was posed to me about an island in the city of
Konigsberg, surrounded by a river spanned by seven bridges,
and I was asked whether someone could traverse the separate
bridges in a connected walk in such a way that each bridge
is crossed only once. I was informed that hitherto no-one
had demonstrated the possibility of doing this, or shown
that it is impossible. This question is so banal, but seemed
to me worthy of attention in that geometry, nor algebra, nor
even the art of counting was sufficient to solve it. In view
of this, it occurred to me to wonder whether it belonged to
the geometry of position [geometriam Situs], which Leibniz
had once so much longed for. And so, after some
deliberation, I obtained a simple, yet completely
established, rule with whose help one can immediately decide
for all examples of this kind, with any number of bridges in
any arrangement, whether such a round trip is possible, or
not . . . |
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