Classical roots of knot theory

Vandermonde wrote in 1771: “Whatever the twists and turns of a system of threads in space, one can always obtain an expression for the calculation of its dimensions, but this expression will be of little use in practice. The craftsman who fashions a braid, a net, or some knots will be concerned, not with questions of measurement, but with those of position: what he sees there is the manner in which the threads are interlaced.” We sketch in this essay the history of knot theory stressing the combinatorial aspect of the theory that is so visible in Jones type invariants.