Configurations between geometry and combinatorics Original Research Article

The combinatorial structure configuration which was already defined as early as 1876 is the topic of this paper. In their early years configurations were regarded to be finite geometrical substructures of the plane. The best example is the wrong picture of a configuration 103 by Kantor. However, before 1890 configurations were already established as purely combinatorial structures. In the 20th century the problem of realization of configurations over fields and of drawing of configurations in the real plane has been investigated.