A week before this date, on May 25, Jefferson mentioned the acquisition of these books in a letter, dated from Washington,
to William Dunbar and concerning Captain Lewis’s expedition and the means of obtaining longitudes: “
. . . in conversation afterwards with Baron Humboldt, he observed that the idea was correct, but not new, that I would find
it in the 3d vol. of Delalande. I recieved two days ago the 3d & 4th vols of Montucla’s hist. of Mathematics, finished & edited
by Delalande; and find in fact that Morin & Vanlangren in the 17th century proposed observations of the moon on the meridian,
but it does not appear whether they meant to dispense with the time keeper . . .
”
Jefferson mentioned Montucla’s work in his letter to L. H. Girardin quoted above; see no. 3667.
In his letter to Isaac McPherson concerning patents (see no. 3682), he mentioned Lalande’s continuation: “
. . . in a book which I do not possess, ‘
L’architecture Hidraulique de Belidor, the II
d. vol. of which is said
[
De la Lande’s continuation of Montucla’s Histoire des Mathematiques III. 711.]
to contain a detail of all the pumps, antient and modern, hydraulic machines, fountains, wells etc. . . .”
In a letter to Robert Walsh, Jr. dated from Monticello January 9, 1818, Jefferson wrote: “
I returned a few days ago only from a long visit to my other home, the Poplar Forest. this must apologise for my long detention
of your book. I have read it with great delight. Montucla is so voluminous that we can read him but once. but Playfair has
brought into a small compass the leading facts in Mathematical history, and presented them so philosophically to our view,
as that the memory can scarcely lose them a second time . . .
”
Jean Étienne Montucla, 1725-1799, French professor of mathematics, died during the printing of the third volume of his work which was then finished
and edited by his friend Jerome de Lalande [i.e. Joseph Jérome Le François de Lalande], 1732-1807, the famous French astronomer.
Robert Walsh, Jr., 1784-1859, the author of the life of Franklin in Delaplaine's Repository, for which he obtained information from Jefferson (see no. 466). For an account of Walsh and his activities, see the Dictionary of American Biography.
[3694]
32
Histoire generale des Mathematiques par Bossut.
2. v.
8
vo.
1815 Catalogue, page 109, no. 1, as above.
BOSSUT,
Charles, Abbé.
Essai sur l’Histoire Générale des Mathématiques, par Charles Bossut . . .
Paris: chez
Louis,
1802.
2 vol. 8vo., portrait frontispiece;
Discours sur la vie et les oeuvres de Pascal
at the end of vol. 2; no copy was seen for collation.
Jefferson’s copy was bound by John March on March 7, 1805, at a cost of $2.00. It was bought from
J. P. Reibelt, Baltimore, in February, 1805, price $
4.00.
This work is one of those quoted by Jefferson in his letter on patents to Isaac McPherson dated from Monticello August 13,
1813: “
. . . Bossut Histoire des Mathematiques i. 86. says ‘the drum wheel, the wheel with buckets & the
Chapelets
, are hydraulic machines which come to us from the antients: but we are ignorant of the time when they began to be put into
use’ . . .
” [See no. 3682.]
Abbé Charles Bossut, 1730-1814, French mathematician and geometrician, was a member of the Académie des Sciences.
[3695]
33
Callet’s Tables of Logarithms Stereotype.
8
vo.
1815 Catalogue, page 109, no. 28, as above.
CALLET,
Jean François.
Tables of Logarithms, containing the Logarithms of all Numbers, from 1 to 108000; the Logarithm Sines and Tangents to every
Second, for the five first Degrees, to every ten Seconds, for all the Degrees of a Quadrant of the Circle; and to
