In the static analysis of objects under forces but fixed at mechanical equilibrium, the principle of virtual work imagines tiny mathematical shifts away from equilibrium. Each shift does work—energy lost or gained—against the forces, but the sum of all these bits of virtual work must be zero. This principle was developed by Johann Bernoulli in a letter to Pierre Varignon in 1715, but never separately published. Cornelius Lanczos uses a slightly different definition as the single postulate for all analytic mechanics, showing thereby the power of energy based variational principles over Newtonian mechanics.