Discoveries in anagrams
Date
4 September 1669
Creator
Unknown, Artist
Object type
Archive reference number
Manuscript page number
p1
Material
Dimensions
height (page): 308mm
width (page): 210mm
width (page): 210mm
Subject
Description
These are anagrams of 14 propositions that describe Christian Huygens's discoveries. Huygens, in his letter to Henry Oldenburg dated 25 August 1669, asked them to be kept at the Royal Society in order to secure his priority in their discovery. These were noted at the meeting of the Society on 21 October 1669.
Transcription
Anagrammata Propositionum XIV que, quam primum licebit explicanda, about Illustrissima Soc. Regiam Londinensem deponit atque ab ea adservari rogat Chr. Hugenius [= Christiaan Huygens deposits anagrams of fourteen prpositions with the illustrious Royal Society of London, which will be explained at the fist opportunity, and asks that the Society register them.]
Transcribed by the Making Visible project
Transcribed by the Making Visible project
Object history
At the meeting of the Royal Society on 21 October 1669, ‘Two letters to Mr. Oldenburg from M. Huygens, dated Aug 10, and Sept 4, 1669, N.S. at Paris; the former of which commended Dr. Wren’s demonstration of the hyperbolical cycloid, and acknowledged the doctor’s way of compendious printing to be the same with his own; adding some notable experiments of a large burning concave made in France; together with his opinion of Mr. William Neile’s hypothesis of motion, whose reasoning he thought very metaphysical and subtile, but whose principles he could not for the most part assent to. The other letter deposited with the society a paper containing the anagrams of fourteen propositions of Monsr. Huygens, to be explained in due time, with some account of the success of his sea watches’ (Birch 2:396-97).
Related fellows
Christiaan Huygens (1629 - 2006, Dutch) , Natural philosopher
Associated place