"Let a thin, flat metal plate be heated... so that the temperature T is not uniform... clamp or otherwise constrain the plate to keep it from buckling... remain flat... Make simple geometric measurements... with a short metal rule, which has a certain coefficient of expansion c... What is the geometry of the plate as revealed by the results of those measurements? ...he geometry will not turn out to be Euclidean, for the rule will expand more in the hotter regions... he plate will seem to have a negative curvature K... the kind of structure exhibited... in the neighborhood of a ."

“This... is an outrageously over-simplified account of the assumptions and procedures...”

“Euclidean geometry is only one of several congruence geometries... Each of these geometries is characterized by a real number K, which for Euclidean geometry is 0, for the hyperbolic negative, and for the spherical and elliptic geometries, positive. In the case of 2-dimensional congruence spaces... K may be interpreted as the of the surface into the third dimension—whence it derives its name...”

“What is needed is a homely experiment which could be carried out in the basement with parts from an old sewing machine and an Ingersoll watch, with an old file of Popular Mechanics standing by for reference! This I am, alas, afraid we have not achieved, but I do believe that the following example... is adequate to expose the principles...”

“We should, of course, expect that any universe which expands without limit will approach the empty de Sitter case, and that its ultimate fate is a state in which each physical unit—perhaps each nebula or intimate group of nebulae—is the only thing which exists within its own observable universe.”

“An "empty world," i.e., a homogeneous manifold at all points at which equations are satisfied, has, according to the theory, a constant Riemann curvature, and any deviation from this fundamental solution is to be directly attributed to the influence of matter or energy.”

“In considerations involving the nature of the world as a whole the irregularities caused by the aggregation of matter into stars and stellar systems may be ignored; and if we further assume that the total matter in the world has but little effect on its macroscopic properties, we may consider them as being determined by the solution of an empty world.”