John Collins on Newton's telescope

Abstract

It is a well-known story how, after the death in 1683 of John Collins (F.R.S. 1667), the mathematical correspondent of Barrow, Newton, Wallis, James Gregory and so many more, Collins’s voluminous collection of books and papers passed into the possession of William Jones (1675-1749; F.R.S. 1712), himself an avid collector and transcriber of the manuscripts of Newton, Halley and others. Because Jones had acted as tutor to George Parker, later second Earl of Macclesfield, and afterwards lived for many years at Shirbum Castle, Oxon., this enhanced collection has remained ever since with that family. It is equally well known that the book edited by S.J. Rigaud in 1841, The Correspondence of Scientific Men of the Seventeenth Century , was drawn from the riches of the Macclesfield collection. Most of the letters had not been printed before and not many have been re-edited since. However, when in 1712 Isaac Newton prepared his biographical riposte against Leibniz in defence of his original discovery of the method of fluxions, he printed extracts from a number of letters found in Jones’s collection, and the original letters (or drafts) used in this way remained (as evidence) in the possession of the Royal Society - of which of course Newton was President - the Society being formally the publisher of the resultant slim volume, Commercium Epistolicum D. Johannis Collins, et aliorum de Analysi promota: jussu Societatis Regiae in lucent editum (London 1712). Today that collection of letters remains in the Royal Society’s library mounted in its own particular guard-book. 1