Joseph Milligan on August 11, 1815, which may have been for his own library, or may have been intended as a replacement copy for the Library
of Congress.
Jefferson mentioned this book in a letter to Melatiah Nash concerning his
Ephemeris
, dated from Monticello November 15, 1811: “
To give novelty, and increase the appetite for continuing to buy your Ephemeris annually, you might every year select some
one or two useful tables which many would wish to possess & preserve. These are to be found in the Requisite tables, the Connoissances
des tems of different years, and many in Pike’s arithmetic.
”
Nicholas Pike, 1743-1819, mathematician, was a native of New Hampshire. The first edition of this work was published in Newburyport in
1788.
Ebenezer Adams, 1765-1841, also a native of New Hampshire, became a preceptor in the academy at Leicester, Mass., in 1792, and eventually,
in 1810, professor of mathematics at Dartmouth College.
Melatiah Nash, fl. 1799-1819, published his Columbian Ephemeris and Astronomical Diary, referred to by Jefferson in this letter, in 1812.
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5
Potter’s Mathematics.
8
vo.
1815 Catalogue, page 110, no. 6, as above.
POTTER,
John.
A System of Practical Mathematics . . . with a plain Account of the Gregorian or New Style, settled by Act of Parliament;
the method of finding the Epact, Moon’s Age, Tides, &c. With necessary Tables: particularly the Table calculated by the Right
Honourable George Earl of Macclesfield, for finding Easter. Tables of Logarithms, Sines, and Tangents; with their description
and use . . . To which are added, by way of Appendix, Cycles of the primary Planets, never before published; with Mr. Whiston’s
Cycle for the calculation of Solar Eclipses without Parallaxes. By John Potter . . .
London: Printed for the author; and sold by
E. Comyns, and all booksellers in
Great-Britain and
Ireland,
m dcc lix
. [1759]
8vo. No copy of this edition was seen for collation. The title leaf is preceded by a leaf with the title-page of Nathaniel
Hammond’s
Elements of Algebra
, and on the title of Potter’s book is a recommendation signed Nath. Hammond, and dated from the Bank of England, Feb. 4, 1752.
In a letter to L. H. Girardin, dated from Monticello, March 18, 1814, concerning Lord Napier’s theorem for the solution of
right-angled spherical triangles, Jefferson wrote: “
. . . with you I think it strange that the French mathematicians have not used, or noticed, this method more than they have
done. Montucla, in his account of Lord Napier’s inventions, expresses a like surprise at this fact, and does justice to the
ingenuity, the elegance, and convenience of the theorem, which, by a single rule, easily preserved in the memory, supplies
the whole Table of Cases, given in the books of Spherical trigonometry. yet he does not state the rule; but refers for it
to Wolf:
Cours de Mathematiques. I have not the larger work of Wolf; and in the French translation of his abridgment (by some Member of the congregation
of S
t. Maur) the branch of Spherical trigonometry is entirely omitted. Potter, one of the English authors of Courses of mathematics,
has given the Catholic proposition, as it is called, but in terms unintelligible, and leading to error, until, by repeated
trials, we have ascertained the meaning of some of his equivocal expressions. in Robert Simson’s Euclid we have the theorem,
with it’s demonstrations, but, less aptly for the memory, divided into two rules; and these are extended, as the original
was, only to the cases of right angled triangles . . . .
”
John Potter, English mathematician, musician and clergyman, was vicar of Cloford, Somerset. The first edition of this work appeared in
1753.
John Napier (or Neper), 1550-1617, eighth Laird of Merchiston, known as the inventor of logarithms, explained their construction in his earliest work on the subject before he had invented that word. His Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptiowas published in 1614.
[3667]
