Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.17431

    Diagram in papers for Commercium Epistolicum

    Date
    8 June 1675
    Creator
    Unknown, Artist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p19
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 309mm
    width (page): 202mm
    Subject
    Description
    Extract from James Gregorie's letter to Henry Oldenburg dated 8 June 1675, about his method of determining the limits of a biquadratic equation using the roots.

    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.

    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
    Paper headed, 'To find the Limits of a Quadratick equation, by the rootes of a quadratick equation'

    Endorsed 'No. 46: p. 127, 128 Commerc. Epist. Edit. 1722. Extracts from Mr Gregories Letters To be sent to Monsr Leibnitz to peruse who is desired to returne the same to you.'
    Transcribed by the Making Visible project
    Object history
    Extract (without the diagram) printed in Commercium Epistolicum D. Johannis Collins, et aliorum De analysi promota (London: Typis Pearsonianis, 1712), pp. 46-47; Commercium epistolicum D. Johannis Collins, et aliorum de analysi promota (London: J. Tonson & J. Watts, 1722), pp. 127-28.
    Related fellows
    James Gregorie (1638 - 1675, Scottish) , Mathematician
    Henry Oldenburg (1612 - 1677, German) , Scientific correspondent
    Associated place
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