The Tusi couple (also known as Tusi's mechanism[1][2][3]) is a mathematical device in which a small circle rotates inside a larger circle twice the diameter of the smaller circle. Rotations of the circles cause a point on the circumference of the smaller circle to oscillate back and forth in linear motion along a diameter of the larger circle. The Tusi couple is a 2-cusped hypocycloid.
The couple was first proposed by the 13th-century Persianastronomer and mathematicianNasir al-Din al-Tusi in his 1247 Tahrir al-Majisti (Commentary on the Almagest) as a solution for the latitudinal motion of the inferior planets[4] and later used extensively as a substitute for the equant introduced over a thousand years earlier in Ptolemy's Almagest.[5][6]