Notes on Beltrami's Essay

Abstract

Eugenio Beltrami published his seminal 'Essay on the Interpretation of Non-Euclidean Geometry' in 1868, where he showed that geodesics on a surface of constant negative curvature can be mapped as straight lines on a Euclidean disc. More importantly he showed that figures on the disc would satisfy the identities of hyperbolic geometry characteristic of a surface of negative curvature. However Beltrami did not always give a full explanation of the equations which he used. These notes are an attempt to provide a derivation of some of his principal results, including his formula for hyperbolic distance on the disc, his proof that the sum of the (hyperbolic) angles of a triangle on the disc is less than two right angles and his equations for circles, equidistants and horocycles.