Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.17442

    Diagram in papers for Commercium Epistolicum

    Date
    14 September 1699
    Creator
    Unknown, Artist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p45
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 310mm
    width (page): 192mm
    Subject
    Description
    Diagram of the problem John Collins wished Henry Oldenburg to pose to Renatus Franciscus Slusius: whether he had a construction 'for salving of Solid problemes, wherein the Axes either of a Parabola or Hyperbola, and the longer Axis of an Ellipses or any two of these figures may meet without the concave figure'.

    Collins wrote the letter in English which Oldenburg then translated into Latin. The English version of the letter is the one depicted here (copies can be found in Cl.P/24/24/004 and Cl.P/24/36), and copies of the Latin version can be found in the Letter Book (LBO/3/178) and its copy (LBC/3/217).

    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).

    For Newton's review of Commercium Epsitolicum, see Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 29, no. 342 (January and February 1715), pp. 173-224.
    Transcription
    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.'

    About the Advancement of Constructions for Constructions for aequations

    Mr Gregory being weist to considre a generall method for finding what aequations were sofwed(?) by Ordinates falling from the Intersections of any two Conick Sections or other geometricall Curves, upon the Axes of parallels thereto of either figure, those figures being determined, and supposed deamand in any position at pleasure, in answer whereto when he was here in 1673 said he had considered the same and fa[?] painted therein, the like hath been also done by Mr Newton but having recd nothing conserning but what was long smet[?] imparted by the Reverend Doctor Barrow I think fitt to ammex the same
    Transcribed by the Making Visible project
    Related fellows
    James Gregorie (1638 - 1675, Scottish) , Mathematician
    Isaac Newton (1642 - 1727, British) , Natural philosopher
    Isaac Barrow (1630 - 1677, British) , Classical and Mathematical Scholar, Mathematician
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