Elementary arithmetic, with brief notices of its history... by Robert Potts.

20

INTRODUCTION.

late Professor De Morgan: —" The founder of the school of English
writers (to any useful or sensible purpose) is Robert Recorde, the
physician, a man whose memory deserves a much larger portion of
fame than it has met with on several accounts. He was the first who
wrote on arithmetic in English (that is, anything of a higher cast
than the works mentioned by Tonstall); the first who wrote on geometry
in English; the first who introduced algebra into England; the first
who wrote on astronomy and the doctrine of the sphere in English;
the first, and finally the first Englishman (in all probability) who
adopted the system of Copernicus."
Some of his works passed through numerous editions, and were
long in estimation. His " Grounde of Artes " was first published in
1549, and dedicated to King Edward VI. The last edition of this
work was published in 1669, with additions by Edward Hatton. " The
Castle of Knowledge" was first printed in 1556, and dedicated in
English to Queen Mary, and in Latin to Cardinal Pole. " The Whetstone of Witte," published 1557, was dedicated to "the Companie of
venturers into Moscovia." In the " Pathway to Knowledge " he thus
writes his opinion of the authority of Ptolemy:"No man can worthely praise Ptolemye, his travell being so
great, his diligence so exacte in observations, and conference with all
nations, and all ages, and his reasonable examination of all opinions,
with demonstrable confirmation of his owne assertion, yet muste you
and allmen take heed, that both in him and in al mennes workes, you
be not abused by their autoritye, but evermore attend to their reasons,
and examine them well, ever regarding more what is saide, and how
it is proved, than who saieth it; for autoritye oft times deceiveth many
menne," &c.
He wrote on other subjects besides the mathematical sciences; one
of these works, " The Urinal of Physic," may be named as having
passed through four or five editions. It is melancholy to add that a.
man so learned and accomplished in various knowledge was imprisoned
for debt in the King's Bench Prison, and died there, probably in 1588.
William Buckley, a native of Lichfield, was educated at Eton,
where he was elected to King's College, Cambridge, in 1537, and was,
admitted M.A. in 1545. He was much esteemed by King Edward VI.,
and during his reign he was sent for by Sir John Cheke, when Provost
of King's College, to instruct the students in arithmetic and geometry.
He was the author of a small tract on arithmetic, entitled " Arithmetica Memorativa," written in Hexameter verse. It contains about
320 verses, giving all the ordinary rules of the science as then known
and practised. It was first published in 1550, and afterwards printed
at the end of "Seaton's Dialectica," at Cambridge, 1631.1
It is a fact, and one which exhibits the slow progress of the human
mind, not only in discovery and invention, but even in the application
of well-known principles, that the extension of the denary notation to
the descending scale was not discovered before the latter part of the
sixteenth century, more than a thousand years after the decimal
1 At the end is placed the following epigram:EpiL 7 TS XPefas T7TS apLLueTLICKj S TEXZP1S.
MeTpov TE, TcWv T y, Cuyv Tre, IKaL?(TOV &p40ol
Eupov fIv wrp'W0ro. T'ros 5e &8KaioaLvfl.
'E- se KcatoivvSp) vAX/3S}lrV 7ra' apeTr 'CrTi.
"Ov TL Vsocaos Up' uV ras avp &Oipos &AiWp.