From: John Wilson <wilsonj@maths.ox.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: sci.math
Subject: Re: Trisecting an Angle
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 09:01:18 +0000

On Mon, 19 Jan 1998 watland@abacusnet.net wrote:

> Years back, I learned a method of trisecting an angle
> by using a compass and straight edge.

As people have correctly pointed out, there is (provably) no way to do
this in the classical sense. A while back someone told me a way to do it
that cheats (in at least one way) by coming out of the plane:

1. cut out your angle and roll it up to form a cone with circular base;
2. put the base of this cone on another piece of paper,
   and trace round it, marking the point where the join is;
3. draw chords to the circle starting from the marked point -- this forms
   a hexagon inscribed to the circle;
4. line the cone up on the circle again, and mark where the second vertex
   of the hexagon touches it -- when you unroll this, you will have
   trisected the angle you started with.

John Wilson.