Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.17419

    Diagram in papers for Commercium Epistolicum

    Date
    15 July 1674
    Creator
    Unknown, Artist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p1v
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 226mm
    width (page): 169mm
    Subject
    Description
    Figure in a letter by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz to Henry Oldenburg dated 15 July 1674, describing a rational quadrature of a particular segment of a cycloid.

    This volume contains the letters and papers of John Collins (1625-1683), which came into the possession of William Jones (1675-1749), who used them in Commercium Epistolicum, designed to prove Isaac Newton’s priority over Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in the invention of fluxions (calculus).

    The original letters were sealed up at the order of the Royal Society's council (25 October 1714) and stored in an iron chest. Further letters used in the 1722 edition of Commercium Epistolicum must have been added and stored with the original papers. These were ordered on 13 September 1737 to be ‘taken out of the Iron Chest’ and entrusted to Jones, who was asked to paste them into a guard-book in one volume (CMO/2/252, CMO/3/73).
    Transcription
    Endorsed 'No. 32: p. 114' [reference to the 1722 edition of Commercium Epistolicum].
    Transcribed by the Making Visible project
    Object history
    A summary of the letter is printed in Commercium Epistolicum D. Johannis Collins, et aliorum De analysi promota (London: Typis Pearsonianis, 1712), p. 37; Commercium epistolicum D. Johannis Collins, et aliorum de analysi promota (London: J. Tonson & J. Watts, 1722), p. 114.
    Related fellows
    Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646 - 1716, German) , Natural philosopher
    Henry Oldenburg (1612 - 1677, German) , Scientific correspondent
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > Germany
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