Gabriel's horn

Uncommon card · No. 88577

Gabriel's horn (also called Torricelli's trumpet) is a type of geometric figure that has infinite surface area but finite volume. The name refers to the Christian idea that the archangel Gabriel will one day blow his horn to announce Judgment Day. The properties of this figure were first studied by Italian physicist and mathematician Evangelista Torricelli in the 17th century. The names Gabriel's horn and Torricelli's trumpet were not published by Torricelli. His name for the figure appears in the Latin title of his paper De solido hyperbolico acuto, written in 1643, a truncated acute hyperbolic solid, cut by a plane. Volume 1, part 1 of his Opera geometrica published the following year included that paper and a second more orthodox (for the time) Archimedean proof of its theorem about the volume of a truncated acute hyperbolic solid. This name was used in mathematical dictionaries of the 18th century, including "Hyperbolicum Acutum" in Harris' 1704 dictionary and in Stone's 1726 one, and...

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