Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.14412

    Diagram concerning the air's resistance to bodies moved in it

    Date
    17 January 1687
    Creator
    Unknown, Artist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p49
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 370mm
    width (page): 235mm
    Subject
    Description
    Two diagrams in a copy of a letter from John Wallis to Edmond Halley dated 17 January 1687 at Oxford.

    Read at the meeting on 26 January 1687.
    Transcription
    Let such ordinate dh, or (equal to it in the Asymptote) AF, be so divided in LM N etc (by perpendiculare cutting the hyperbola in l, m, n, etc) as that FL, LM, MN etc be as 1/m, 1/mm, 1/m3 etc. That is, so continually decreasing, as that each antecedent be to its consequent, as 1 to 1/m, or as m to 1.
    Transcribed by the Making Visible project
    Object history
    At the meeting of the Royal Society on 26 January 1687, ‘A letter of Dr. Wallis was read, concerning the resistance of the medium to bodies projected through it, as likewise to the fall of bodies: and it was ordered to be printed in one of the next Philosophical Transactions’ (Birch 4:521).

    Printed in J. Wallis, ‘Concerning the measure of the airs resistance to bodies moved in it’, Phil. Trans. vol. 16, no. 186 (January, February and March, 1687), pp. 269-80.
    Related fellows
    John Wallis (1650, British) , Mathematician
    Edmond Halley (1656 - 1742, British) , Astronomer
    Associated place
    <The World>
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          > United Kingdom
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