1. Bernard Massey and John Ward-Smith, Mechanics of Fluids, 7th ed. (Cheltenham: Stanley Thornes Publishers, 1998), 13.
2. The evolution of the science of hydrostatics in the seventeenth century is described in historical detail in Alan F. Chalmers, One Hundred Years of Pressure: Hydrostatics from Stevin to Newton (Dordrecht: Springer, 2017). Here I extract and describe the main message in a way that I hope will appeal to physicists.
3. Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis, The Principal Works of Simon Stevin, vol. 1, Mechanics (Amsterdam: Swets and Zeitlinger, 1995), 375–483.
4. Blaise Pascal, The Physical Treatise of Pascal: The Equilibrium of Liquid and the Weight of the Mass of the Air, trans. A. G. H. Spiers and I. H. B. Spiers (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937).
5. Dijksterhuis, Works of Simon Stevin (ref. 3).