This scholarly activity has resulted in the rediscovery of many earlier works on the subject, and nearly all the scholars now working in this field have acknowledged in one way or another their debt to those who arrived on the scene at an earlier time than they. There have been occasional reviews of the sequence and nature of developments, but the emphasis naturally has been upon the recent past. It seems to me that there is something to be gained in looking beyond our own generation, or even beyond the time of Franz Reuleaux (1829-1905), who is generally credited with originating many of our modern concepts of mechanism analysis and design, and to inquire into the ideas that made possible Reuleaux's contributions. _Take to Kinematics. It will repay you. It is more fecund than geometry; it adds a fourth dimension to space._ --Chebyshev to Sylvester, 1873 While no pretense of completeness is made, I have tried in this paper to trace the high points in the development of kinematic analysis and synthesis, both in academic circles and in the workshop, noting where possible the influence of one upon the other. If I have devoted more space to particular people and episodes than is warranted by their contributions to the modern treatment of the subject, it is because I have found that the history of kinematics of mechanisms, like the history of any other branch of engineering, is more interesting and more plausible if it is recognized that its evolutionary development is the result of human activity. This history was wrought by people like us, no less intelligent and no less subject than we are to environment, to a subjective way of looking at things, and to a heritage of ideas and beliefs. I have selected the period from the time of Watt because modern mechanisms originated with him, and I have emphasized the first century of the period because by 1885 many of the ideas of modern kinematics of mechanisms were well developed. Linkages are discussed, to the virtual exclusion of gears and cams, because much of the scholarly work in kinematic synthesis is presently directed toward the design of linkages and because linkages provide a convenient thread for a narrative that would have become unnecessarily complex if detailed treatment of gears and cams had been included. I have brought the narrative down to the present by tracing kinematics as taught in American engineering schools, closing with brief mention of the scholarly activity in kinematics in this country since 1950. An annotated list of additional references is appended as an encouragement to further work in the history of the subject. James Watt, Kinematic Synthesist