BSHM Meeting News

Abstract

s from past meetings Workshop on Mathematical and Astronomical Practices in Pre-enlightenment Scotland and her European Networks 23–24 November 2018 University of St Andrews Alison Morrison-Low (National Museums of Scotland) Surviving scientific instruments from early modern Scotland: a survey When did instrument-making come to Scotland? In contrast to the rest of Europe, this activity appeared relatively late. Humphrey Cole was the first native-born English instrument maker, taught by immigrant Flemings in the last days of the Tudor dynasty. Itemsmade locally before the Restoration of the Stuarts in 1660 remain extremely unusual. The earliest signed instrument made in Scotland is now held by National Museums Scotland, having appeared in a London saleroom in 1972. It is signed by Robert Davenport, who had served his apprenticeship with the great Londonmaker Elias Allen, whowas commissioned byWilliamOughtred to make both Oughtred’s ‘Circles of Proportion’ (the earliest logarithmic calculating scale, which is on the reverse of this instrument) and the horizontal instrument, which used his form of stereographic projection. Davenport was working in Edinburgh by 1647, but it is not known for how long he stayed. This is the only instrument known with his signature, and was made for the latitude of Edinburgh. Of course, that is not to say that mathematical instruments or instruments used in natural philosophy were unknown in Scotland before this date: and this paper will discuss a number of these. Samuel Gessner (Lisbon) Thinking with instruments and the appropriation of logarithms on the Iberian Peninsula around 1630 Lord Napier’s tables and their explanation were actively publicized by the mathematical practitioners gravitating around Gresham college in London in the 1610s. In the spirit of that context, characterized by an acute interest for mathematical instruments, Gunter and Oughtred, a few years later, devised logarithmic scales to put on instruments. Both sought the expertise of the instrument maker Elias Allen to turn their ideas into brass objects. This paper focuses on a Jesuit who lectured on mathematics at the College of Santo Antão in Lisbon: Ignace Stafford. He elaborated two manuscripts in Castilian that touch upon logarithms in the 1630s. One is about trigonometry, the second is a practical arithmetic that systematically treats the various problems by Gunter’s and Oughtred’s logarithmic instruments. Stafford’s books represent evidence of the impressive velocity with which knowledge about logarithms and connected instruments spread to the other end of Europe and the readiness with which it has been absorbed into local treatise production. These exceptional sources prompt the question of the importance of instruments for new mathematical concepts to travel. In particular, they allow Volume 35 (2020) 95