Catenary? How many of us remember Simon Stevin, Belgian mathematics luminary, who described properties of catenary, and was so proud of it he had one put on his tombstone?

Scientific American: Connections: Tick Tock: August 1998
... This arcane catenary matter had originally been the obsession of a Dutch noodler
named Simon Stevin, who in 1585 also had the novel idea of decimal coinage. No ...
http://www.sciam.com/1998/0898issue/0898connections.html