Some classical formulæ for curves and surfaces

Abstract

The goal of this text is to present the computation by Salmon, in the second half of the XIXth century, of various numbers enumerating planes with a prescribed tangency pattern with a sufficiently general surface $S$ in ${\mathbf{P}}^3$ (or, equivalently, of hyperplane sections of $S$ with prescribed singularities). Emblematic among these are the number of tritangent planes, and the number of planes cutting out a curve with a tacnode.

v2: minor improvements to the appendix on polarity