On the History of Gunter's Scale and the Slide Rule During the Seventeenth CenturyCajori, Florian
History
On the History of Gunter's Scale and the Slide Rule During the Seventeenth Century
Cajori, Florian
Slide-rule
While he was printing his tractate of the Horizontall quadrant, although
he could not but know that it was injurious to me in respect of my free
gift to Master Allen, and of William Forster, whose translation of my
rules was then about to come forth: yet such was my good nature, and his
shamelessnesse, that every day, as any sheet was printed, hee sent, or
brought the same to mee at my chamber in Arundell house to peruse which I
lovingly and ingenuously did, and gave him my judgment of it.
Even after Forster’s publication of Oughtred’s Circles of Proportion, 1632,
Oughtred had a book, A canon of Sines Tangents and Secants, which he had
borrowed from Delamain and was then returning (Epistle, page (5)). The
attacks which Forster, in the preface to the Circles of Proportion, made
upon Delamain (though not naming Delamain) started the quarrel. Except for
Forster and other pupils of Oughtred who urged him on to castigate
Delamain, the controversy might never have arisen. Forster expressed
himself in part as follows:
. . . being in the time of the long vacation 1630, in the Country, at the
house of the Reverend, and my most worthy friend, and Teacher, Mr.
William Oughtred (to whose instruction I owe both my initiation, and
whole progresse in these Sciences.) I vpon occasion of speech told him of
a Ruler of Numbers, Sines, & Tangents, which one had be-spoken to be made
(such as it vsually called Mr. Gunter’s Ruler) 6 feet long, to be vsed
with a payre of beame-compasses. “He answered that was a poore invention,
and the performance very troublesome: But, said he, seeing you are taken
with such mechanicall wayes of Instruments, I will shew you what deuises
I have had by mee these many yeares.” And first, hee brought to mee two
Rulers of that sort, to be vsed by applying one to the other, without any
compasses: and after that hee shewed mee those lines cast into a circle
or Ring, with another moueable circle vpon it. I seeing the great
expeditenesse of both those wayes; but especially, of the latter, wherein
it farre excelleth any other Instrument which hath bin knowne; told him,
I wondered that hee could so many yeares conceale such vseful inuentions,
not onely from the world, but from my selfe, to whom in other parts and
mysteries of Art, he had bin so liberall. He answered, “That the true way
of Art is not by Instruments, but by Demonstration: and that it is a
preposterous course of vulgar Teachers, to begin with Instruments, and
not with the Sciences, and so in-stead of Artists, to make their
Schollers only doers of tricks, and as it were Iuglers: to the despite of
Art, losse of precious time, and betraying of willing and industrious
wits, vnto ignorance and idlenesse. That the vse of Instruments is indeed
excellent, if a man be an Artist: but contemptible, being set and opposed
to Art. And lastly, that he meant to commend to me, the skill of
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