"What is the true geometry of the plate? ...Anyone examining the situation will prefer Poincaré's common-sense solution... to attribute it Euclidean geometry, and to consider the measured deviations... as due to the actions of a force . ...On employing a brass rule in place of one of steel we would find that the local curvature is trebled—and an ideal rule would... lead to Euclidean geometry."

“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...”

“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 .”

“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.”