The Crystal Palace pane of glass (49 inches) as the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle, thereby creating a triangle with a length-to-height ratio of 2.5:1, whose base (adjacent side) was 4 feet long. By mirroring this triangle he obtained the 8-foot-wide gables that formed the vertical faces at either end of the prism, each of which was 24' long. With this arrangement, Paxton could glaze the entire roof surface with identical panes that did not need to be trimmed. Paxton placed three of these 8' x 24' roof units side-by-side, horizontally supported by a grid of cast iron beams, which was held up
Special right triangle Pell numbers 1, 2, 5, 12, 29, 70, 169, 408, 985, 2378... .. The smallest Pythagorean triples resulting are: Alternatively, the same triangles can be derived from the square triangular numbers. The Kepler triangle is a right triangle whose sides are in a geometric progression. If the sides are formed from the geometric progression "a", "ar", "ar" then its common ratio "r" is given by "r" = where "φ" is the golden ratio. Its sides are therefore in the ratio . Thus, the shape of the Kepler triangle is uniquely determined (up to a scale factor) by the requirement that