Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/161

Rh "It may not, therefore, be deemed too sanguine an anticipation, when I express the hope that an instrument which in its simpler form attains to the extraction of the roots of numbers, and approximates to the roots of equations, may, in a more advanced state of improvement, rise to the approximate solutions of algebraic equations of elevated degrees. I refer to solutions of such equations proposed by Lagrange, and more recently by other analysts, which involve operations too tedious and intricate for use, and which must remain without efficacy, unless some mode be devised of abridging the labour or facilitating the means of performance."

I felt, therefore, that the first Royal Medal might fairly become an object of ambition, whatever might be the worth of subsequent ones.

In order to qualify myself for this chance, I carefully drew up a paper, "On a Method of expressing by Signs the Action of Machinery," which I otherwise should not have published at that time.

This Memoir was read at the Royal Society on the 16th March, 1826. To the system of signs which it first expounded I afterwards gave the name of "Mechanical Notation." It had been used in England and in Ireland, although not taught in its schools. It applies to the description of a combat by sea or by land. It can assist in representing the functions of animal life; and I have had both from the Continent and from the United States, specimens of such applications. Finally, to whatever degree of simplicity I may at last have reduced the Analytical Engine, the course 2em