Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.17444

    Diagram in papers for Commercium Epistolicum

    Date
    11 August 1676
    Creator
    Unknown, Artist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p2
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 311mm
    width (page): 207mm
    Subject
    Description
    Diagram from a letter by John Collins to David Gregory, elder brother of James Gregorie, dated 11 August 1676.

    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. 47: p. 129' [reference to the 1722 edition of Commercium Epistolicum].
    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. 47-48; Commercium epistolicum D. Johannis Collins, et aliorum de analysi promota (London: J. Tonson & J. Watts, 1722), pp. 129-30.
    Related fellows
    James Gregorie (1638 - 1675, Scottish) , Mathematician
    John Collins (1625 - 1683, British) , Mathematician, Mathematician
    David Gregory (1659 - 1708, British) , Astronomer, Astronomer
    Associated place
    <The World>
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          > United Kingdom
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