Page:A budget of paradoxes (IA cu31924103990507).pdf/465

 Pardies, Fermat, Towneley, Auzout, D. Gregory, Halley, Machin, Montmort, Cotes, Jones, Saunderson, Reyneau, Brook Taylor, Maupertuis, Bouguer, La Condamine, Folkes, Macclesfield, Baker, Barrow, Flamsteed, Lord Brounker, J. Gregory, Newton and Keill. To these the Museum collection adds the names of Thomas Digges, Dee, Tycho Brahé, Harriot, Lydyat, Briggs, Warner, Tarporley, Pell, Lilly, Oldenburg, Collins, Morland.

The first who appears on the scene is the celebrated Oughtred, who is related to have died of joy at the Restoration: but it should be added, by way of excuse, that he was eighty-six years old. He is an animal of extinct race, an Eton mathematician. Few Eton men, even of the minority which knows what a sliding rule is, are aware that the inventor was of their own school and college: but they may be excused, for Dr. Hutton, so far as his Dictionary bears witness, seems not to have known it any more than they. A glance at one of his letters reminds us of a letter from the Astronomer Royal on the discovery of Neptune, which we printed March 20, 1847. Mr. Airy there contends, and proves it both by Leverrier and by Adams, that the limited publication of a private letter is more efficient than the more general publication of a printed memoir. The same may be true of a dead letter, as opposed to a dead book. Our eye was caught by a letter of Oughtred (1629), containing systematic use of contractions for the words sine, cosine, &c., prefixed to the symbol of the angle. This is so very important a step, simple as it is, that Euler is justly held to have greatly advanced trigonometry by its introduction. Nobody that we know of has noticed that Oughtred was master of the improvement, and willing to have taught it, if people would have learnt. After looking at his dead letter, we naturally turned to his dead book on trigonometry, and there we found the abbreviations s, sco, t, tco, se, seco, regularly established as part of the system of the work. But not one of those who have investigated the contending claims of Euler and Thomas Simpson has chanced to know of Oughtred's 'Trigonometrie': and the present revival is due to his letter, not to his book.

A casual reader, turning over the pages, would imagine that almost all the letters had been printed, either in the General Dictionary, or in Birch, &c.: so often does the supplementary remark begin with 'this letter has been printed in .' For ourselves we thought, until we counted, that a large majority of the letters had been given, either in whole or in part. But the positive strikes the mind more forcibly than the negative: we find that all of which any portion has been in type makes up very